Wikipedia talk:Paid-contribution disclosure

Paid participation:
poetic perspectives

I won't argue for fun,
I won't argue for free,
with someone who's paid
to argue with me.

–Levivich

I'll argue all day,
I'll fight 'til I'm tired.
At least if I lose
I won't get fired.

–Bradv ^[1]

Required disclosure for admin paid advising

There is a proposal at the village pump to add a new disclosure requirement to this policy. Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Required disclosure for admin paid advising. – Joe (talk) 11:17, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

paid-en-wp@wikipedia.org question

Do only checkusers have access to the email or do admins have access as well? S0091 (talk) 15:16, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Guidelines for crowdfunding?

I've been looking through Wikipedia policy guidelines, including this one, to see if there's anything about crowdfunding/recurrent donations platforms (e.g. Patreon, Liberapay, etc.). If I've missed it, please direct me to where it is, but I'm currently left thinking that this represents a pretty substantial gap in our policy on paid contributions. This model of monetisation has become indispensable for many online creators and it's one that works in a different, almost opposite, way to the other forms of paid contribution outlined here. I.e. instead of being commissioned to write an article about a specific thing, it would effectively involve people that already contribute to certain articles and subject areas openly requesting financial support for continuing to do so. (Really it would function similarly to how the WMF requests donations to keep Wikipedia up and running)

Figuring out a policy guideline for crowdfunded work would bring its own share of challenges, like how to declare such a payment on-wiki. But I also think it could be a potential benefit for many editors, as it would open up a route for people to sustain more contributions to the platform. (I wonder how many more people would edit on a part- or full-time basis if this were an option?) It also may not present the same potentially negative influences that other forms of paid contribution can bring. Is a policy on this something the Wikipedia community has considered or would be willing to consider? --Grnrchst (talk) 17:17, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

The same guidance applies for all paid editors. This page describes and links to key guidance, including Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use, and English Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline. Offhand, I can't think of what additional guidance is required; do you have something in mind? (OK, there's one thing: describing your employer might be tricky with a rotating cast of supporters. The best way I can think of at the moment is to maintain a subpage of your user page with the supporter information.) isaacl (talk) 23:25, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

• meta:Crowdfunding Bluerasberry (talk) 00:56, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  @Isaacl; @Bluerasberry: Full disclosure, I have just set up a crowdfunder for recurrent donations, following on from this post. My user page now includes a COI disclosure, in order to be up front and open about what it is I'm doing. If there is anything I've missed in this, please do ping me about what else I need to make sure I include and if there's any precautions I should take going forward. Thanks for the help with checking against the paid-contribution guidance and for linking to the WMF's page on crowdfunding. --Grnrchst (talk) 20:21, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Getting paid

Hi,

I am completely unaware of paid funding and I don't even know that contributing to Wikipedia can be paid. I only contribute out of my passion. If there is any policy like this and I can receive funds for it, please guide me.

Thank you. AK4393 (talk) 10:20, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

AK4393 You misunderstand. Wikipedia does not pay editors. If you choose as an individual to offer Wikipedia editing as a service to others to be paid by them, you must disclose who is paying you, that is a Terms of Use requirement. If you are content to edit Wikipedia due to your passion, then you should continue to do so. Paid editing, though permitted, is often looked upon negatively by the community who is largely here as volunteers. 331dot (talk) 10:26, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Found this - don't know where else to post it. Anything we can do about it?

https://www.entrepreneur.com/en-in/technology/the-hidden-world-of-wikipedia-page-creation-services/476484 MaskedSinger (talk) 11:37, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

See WP:COIN#The Hidden World of Wikipedia Page Creation Services. – Joe (talk) 12:53, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Joe Roe! MaskedSinger (talk) 07:28, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Exemptions

Please see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#Request to give Kseni-kam a leeway. --Altenmann >talk 00:49, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Did I do this right?

This is my first time dealing with payment for editing. Did I do my declaration correctly at Talk:Steve_Azar#Disclosure of paid contributions? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 05:57, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Definition of Paid Editing

Is there a more complete definition of Paid Editing somewhere? Particularly where it comes to employees? If a person works on the management team of a non-profit organization, for example, and they make edits on Wikpedia about that non-profit on their off time as volunteers, are they still considered paid editors? I'm not talking about employees in a marketing department, or some such, but regular members of the organization's management? Thanks! user: smatprt — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.213.42.61 (talk) 19:00, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

We don't know when someone is "on the clock" at work or "off the clock" at home. Management theoretically has marketing as part of their job duties since they supervise the marketers. Generally, employees should disclose. Even if not "paid editing", it's still a conflict of interest. 331dot (talk) 19:20, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree with 331dot.

However, I would add that it is clearly a deficiency in WP:PAID that the general point is not made abundantly clear. It is a frequent occurrence at WP:COIN for employees engaged in obvious promotional activity to protest that they are not specifically paid for their contributions - and of course even the Director of Digital Marketing at a company will not be being paid per edit on Wikipedia.

This oversight in the policy frequently causes unnecessary waste of time when employees make an incomplete disclosure by stating (truthfully) "I am not paid for my contributions to Wikipedia".

Clarification in the policy text to clarify that employees count as WP:PAID would be a significant practical improvement. The issue of "paid for their contributions" clearly describes most accurately the activities of hired third party operatives and is not very useful description of the activities of employees.

(Incidentally, I do hope that the OP in this thread is not attempting to argue that they do not have very profound (and previously undeclared) COI in relation to certain articles to which they have made significant undisclosed COI contributions in years gone by). Axad12 (talk) 23:59, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

I think that's a very good and important point. I would be strongly in favor of adding some language to indicate that editing on behalf of an employer can still be paid editing, even if the editor is not being paid "per edit". --Tryptofish (talk) 22:19, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Do you have some examples that can be examined? The guidance does state Users who are compensated for any publicity efforts related to the subject of their Wikipedia contributions are deemed to be paid editors, regardless of whether they were compensated specifically to edit Wikipedia. (Full disclosure: I wrote collaborated to write the sentence, after in discussion on this talk page.) So far, there hasn't been consensus agreement that edits made by any employee of company X should be considered paid contributions. copy edited to clarify: sentence was refined in discussion with a few participants isaacl (talk) 22:53, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh, of course, that's right. Sorry that I forgot that was already there. For me, that satisfies my concern. I just put "any" and "specifically" into italics in that sentence, to make it a bit more noticeable. In the future, I'd suggest pointing that passage out to paid editors who attempt to argue around it. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:59, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your input here.

Four points...

1) I still think it would be useful if the issue was clarified more prominently within WP:PAID. For example, the opening sentence (Paid contributions on Wikipedia involve editing any page in exchange for compensation, including money or other incentives) clearly implies work on a "pay per editing activity" basis of a nature relevant to 3rd party hires, rather than to people who are salaried and might happen to edit Wikipedia as part of their job. This could surely be significantly improved with a more generic and all-encompassing first sentence which specifically mentions both types of paid activity?

2) Potentially the recurring problem at COIN that I identified is exacerbated by the template placed on users' talk pages. E.g. this one [2] which states you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. This is the sentence directly before the link to WP:PAID and clearly frames the experience in which COI users arrive at WP:PAID to be confronted with the opening sentence quoted under point (1) above.

3) I don't have specific examples of employees stating "I am not paid for my contributions to Wikipedia", but I'm probably the most frequent contributor to COIN (for my sins) and have read every thread there over the last year or so. I can assure you that the point at issue here is repeatedly problematic. I suspect that this is partly due to the fact that those with a blatant financial COI often work in PR/marketing and are old hands at latching on to a particular way of presenting situations to their advantage. As soon as they see something along the lines of "if you are paid for your contributions" they will be thinking "well, I'm an employee, but judged by the way that Wikipedia frames the issue, I am not paid. All I need to do now is say that I'm not paid specifically for my contributions". Those employees who choose to engage at COIN pretty much always use that as their opening gambit.

4) Paid editing by company employees is, I am quite sure, significantly more common that paid editing by 3rd party hires.

So, I do believe that there is an issue here which could easily be resolved by adding prominent clarification to WP:PAID. Axad12 (talk) 03:30, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

The language derives from the terms of use, whose wording doesn't cover employees of a company who aren't editing Wikipedia as part of their job role. Sure, we could try to reach consensus on a change in wording (based on the previous controversy on mentioning volunteers who are effectively unpaid employees, I think a discussion beyond this talk page would be advisable), but personally I don't that's going to easily resolve the problem. Someone ignoring the obvious intent of a paid-contribution disclosure policy in order to promote a subject won't be deterred. isaacl (talk) 04:59, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

I take your point, but my concern is that the current wordings actually invite conflicted paid users to categorically state that they are not paid (on the basis that they are not specifically paid for their contributions).

If seem to me that this could relatively easily be prevented by adding a brief explanatory section to the end of the first sentence of WP:PAID as follows (with added section in italics):

Paid contributions on Wikipedia involve editing any page in exchange for compensation, including money or other incentives. This can include employees of the subject editing an article as part of their job, or third party subcontractors hired by the subject of the article. Paid editors do not have to receive remuneration specifically for editing Wikipedia.

Inevitably there is room for discussion on whether 'as part of their job' is sufficiently broad, or if some alternative wording would better cover the range of possible activity (e.g. employees engaged in marketing/comms would clearly be editing 'as part of their job', but a senior manager or director might reasonably argue that it was not 'part of their job'). However, those are semantic issues which I'm sure could be relatively easily resolved with a more appropriate wording.

I only suggest the wording above as a possibility to clarify the area which seems unclear and which invites PR and marketing operatives to deny that they are WP:PAID. I am not very good at drafting wordings, but hopefully what I am trying to achieve is clear.

One only has to look at the initial post in this thread to see the nature of the problem. The OP's blatant paid COI is apparent via easily accessible off-wiki evidence that numerous users have noted at WP:COIN, here [3], but yet still the user requests clarification on whether they count as being WP:PAID (due primarily to a lack of clarity in the way that the relevant policy is worded). Axad12 (talk) 05:42, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Without more details of the circumstances, the original post described a conflict of interest situation. I think the nature of the edits will play a role into whether or not the conflict is significant, so the question isn't readily answerable in the abstract. I don't think there is any wording that would have prevented that editor from asking more questions (though they might have been on another talk page).

Note Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure § Meaning of "employer, client, and affiliation" has the following list of examples: This includes cases where the employer has hired the user as an employee, has engaged the user under a freelance contract, is compensating the user without a contract, or is compensating the user through the user's employment by another organization. isaacl (talk) 06:20, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I didn't mean to suggest that the user's COI situation should be analysed here. I simply meant that the fact that the user had arrived here to query the definition illustrates the fact that the present definition is not abundantly clear.

I continue to believe that a brief amendment near the start of the policy, as per my suggestion above, would immediately resolve any doubts in COI users' minds and prevent the frequent argument that the users are not paid specifically for their edits.

I'm not sure that I can see any reason not to adopt such a minor clarification.

You have listed some examples above, but sadly the use elsewhere in the policy of phrases such as 'paid for your contributions' seems to over-ride such examples - as company employees often protest that they are not 'specifically' paid for their contributions. Axad12 (talk) 06:35, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

I think it would be useful to hear some other voices here as I have no great wish to keep repeating myself. Axad12 (talk) 06:39, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm thinking that the most useful change to make would be at the talk page template. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:48, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

I'd hate to sound US specific, but Generally, to be exempt from FLSA provisions, an employee must earn a minimum base salary as provided in the regulations and be paid, on a salary basis, the same amount each week, regardless of quantity or quality of work. from: https://www.paychex.com/articles/payroll-taxes/whats-the-difference-between-exempt-and-non-exempt-employees . Someone with "exempt" status wouldn't be some low-level worker with direct supervision. Perhaps one way to reduce people from gaming the system is to phrase it so that any and all editing on their employer's article by "exempt status" or equivalent would be considered "paid" editing regardless of what time of the day, where or what hat they put on when they're editing. Further extend this to include paid/unpaid interns, and volunteers, carrying out tasks at the direction of said people.Graywalls (talk) 08:03, 17 November 2024 (UTC)