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Nitpick: why do Signpost articles not show external links as such but as plainlinks? Maybe a div in Misplaced Pages:Signpost/Template:Signpost-article-start needs closing? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:40, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks for the comment. As the Signpost includes many more external links than normal Misplaced Pages articles, our pieces have been formatted like this for years so that there isn't a forest of external link notations throughout the text. Regards, Ed 13:43, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
It's a bit unclear from the article what the community's reaction is. What are we doing about it? Are there going to be IP blocks? an ArbCom case? SPat 14:29, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
- @SPat: the number of IP ranges WikiPR operates from means that we cannot rangeblock them without basically rangeblocking north america. Kevin Gorman (talk) 15:20, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
- Point of information - Conflict of Interest is a guideline - not a policy. Rklawton (talk) 14:37, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
- Rklawton, thanks—now corrected. Tony (talk) 15:34, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
- wow. I had no idea the scope of the abuse stemming from the newpages bug. We really need to fix that. Bawolff (talk) 15:12, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
Adding to the list of previous coverage: Misplaced Pages:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-06-15/News_and_notes#Paid editing (the Nichalp/Zithan case). Regards, HaeB (talk) 15:22, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
- Tilman, thanks, added. Tony (talk) 15:34, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
- I had no idea that Wiki PR had such wide-spread users, thanks for the informative article. Matty.007 16:14, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
- OK, I'm going to set the cat among the pigeons for a moment. Obviously Wiki-PR's behaviour is disgraceful, and really they must have known that they were violating Misplaced Pages's norms in doing it. But I think they're a symptom of a much broader disease. People (and big, successful, easily notable companies run by intelligent people) don't know how to engage with Misplaced Pages. There's no simple process for requesting an article; AfC last time I looked was horribly backlogged and submissions that would easily survive AfD were being arbitrarily rejected (though what reviewers there were were doing their best), and WP:RA is mostly a pile of links and not much happens there (it's well-intentioned and a good idea, but there's no mechanism for interacting with the people making the suggestions). Add to that the inconsistent and often combative approach to editors with a conflict of interest and Wikipedians' tendency to dismiss enquiries with instructions like "read WP:COI" rather than engage in discussion, and it's no wonder that people feel they have no other option but to pay unscrupulous people like Wiki-PR to create and monitor articles for them. If we had a proper process for working with notable subjects who want an article but want to comply with our policies and norms, there would be no market for these kinds of companies. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:52, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
Serious response by WMF needed
This looks like the tip of the iceberg to me. As far as I can tell, almost all editors are against paid undisclosed advertising and associated practices on Misplaced Pages, with the only opposition to clear policies and practices on this coming from interested parties. After all, undisclosed advertising is against the law in the US and we need to take serious action against it.
The WMF should take several actions against undisclosed advertising by paid editors, as soon as possible. These might include:
- Reporting this incident to the FTC. The law on undisclosed advertising has been broken and the FTC is the policeman.
- Banning all owners, employees and contractors of Wiki-PR from the site, whether we can identify the user names or not.
- Making a serious private investigation into Wiki-PR to determine the extent of the particular problems caused by them. Volunteers can only do so much. Wiki-PR has left a trail of dissatisfied clients and misinformed and unpaid editors as well as public advertising for their "services." This private investigation should include both publicly available input as well as confidentially gathered input, and public conclusions. No way can we sweep this under the rug. I'll just note that one of the volunteer investigators noted above has said that he would leave Misplaced Pages because of the frustrations involved in the case.
- Taking legal action against Wiki-PR, e.g. for defamation of Misplaced Pages by claiming in their ads that Misplaced Pages Administrators are on their staff. I am not a lawyer, so of course potential actions should be considered by legal experts, but I'm sure that aggressive legal action should be considered by the board.
- Formulating policy for all WMF sites, e.g. in the terms of use, that would clearly inform all potential undisclosed advertisers that anything like this is prohibited and that legal action might be taken against them.
- Laying out basics for policy on individual project's prohibitions on paid editing. After the individual encyclopedias and other projects formulate these policies, I believe that they should be voted on in a format similar to the voting for arbcom or the board seats. The RfC format for making this type of policy clearly fails here - only a few hundred editors, at most, can wade through the extensive verbiage on the RfC page, and a determined small group can always muddle the issues, make the process as unpleasant as possible, and keep the RfC from accomplishing anything.
If the WMF does not take these or similar actions, it will only encourage paid advocacy and undisclosed advertising on WMF projects. PR folks will say "they had a obvious clear case of extensive abuse, and all they did was block a few accounts. Looks like they are open for business-as-usual." Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:46, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
- What's the FTC, for those of us not from the US (I'm assuming from the context that it's a US-specific thing?)? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:55, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
- My quotation, used above in the article, can be easily misinterpreted. At WikiExperts.us we are appalled by the tactics reportedly used by Wiki-PR. We provide Misplaced Pages visibility services ONLY to notable companies an individuals, and strictly abide by Misplaced Pages content rules. We consider Misplaced Pages to be one of the greatest achievements of the Internet Age, respect its founders and volunteers, and only critique policies which we see to be endangering Misplaced Pages's ongoing success. My compete statement at CREWE can be seen at https://www.facebook.com/groups/crewe.group/permalink/433836930054893/ AKonanykhin (talk) 17:09, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
- What is there to misinterpret? There are PR people who work within the community with transparency. There are people like you who try to hide their activities. Our goal has never been to write "problem free articles", especially not when the problem you want to fix are not editorial problems, but PR problems for your clients. Gigs (talk) 18:01, 10 October 2013 (UTC)