Template talk:Uw-paid1/Archive 1

Archive 1

Rewording "undisclosed paid editing"

{{edit request}}

Although this template does not state so, I assume it is intended to be placed on the user talk pages of users suspected of undisclosed paid edits (because I can't imagine any reason to place it on the page of an editor who has already made a paid editing disclosure). Given this, the template needs to be reworded:

Hello [username]. It appears that you may be engaged in paid editing, and may have an undisclosed paid editing conflict-of-interest (COI). Undisclosed paid editing is an especially egregious type of conflict of interest, and the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use require our editors to make a disclosure whenever they have been paid for edits they make to Wikipedia. Please see WP:PAID for more information about our paid editing policies, to learn how to make a disclosure, and for instructions on how to perform paid edits.

If in fact you have not been compensated for your edits, please respond to this message by editing this page and making a statement below; otherwise, please provide an appropriate paid editing disclosure, and please do not make any additional edits until you have done this. Thank you.

The entire reworded code for this is here:

Code

{{{icon|[[File:Information.svg|left|25px|alt=Information icon]]}}} Hello {{SAFESUBST:<noinclude />BASEPAGENAME}}. It appears that you may be engaged in paid editing, and may have an undisclosed paid editing conflict-of-interest ([[WP:COI|COI]]){{SAFESUBST:<noinclude />#if:{{{1|}}}|, such as the edit you made to [[:{{{1}}}]]}}. Undisclosed paid editing is an especially egregious type of conflict of interest, and the [[wmf:TOU|Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use]] ''require'' our editors to make a disclosure whenever they have been paid for edits they make to Wikipedia. Please see [[WP:PAID]] for more information about our paid editing policies, to learn how to make a disclosure, and for instructions on how to perform paid edits.<br>If in fact you have not been compensated for your edits, please respond to this message by editing this page and making a statement below; otherwise, please provide an appropriate paid editing disclosure, and please do not make any additional edits until you have done this. {{{2|}}}{{Z159}}<!-- Template:Uw-paid1 --><noinclude> {{Templatesnotice|series = uw-paid|max = 4|notwinkle = yes}} </noinclude>

...This version also leaves the instructions about how to disclose a paid edit to the appropriate page (the reiteration here is incomplete and, given the existence of a policy page that covers it, redundant). I have placed similar edit request at the talk pages for {{uw-paid2}}, {{uw-paid3}}, and {{uw-paid4}}. Thanks. KDS4444 ^(talk) 19:11, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

I think that you're misinterpreting the use of the edit request template. It's only to be used for proposing edits to articles where you have a conflict of interest, and is unrelated to fixing templates. I've now changed it to a help me template, and the editors there can hopefully point you to the right place/ help resolve the issue. Regards, VB00 (talk) 19:49, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi KDS4444. Thanks for coming by. I'm afraid some your suggested edit would make this template far less effective in actually getting compliance, and your suggested change to the end (from answering the template's charge directly, until the warned user has answered or complied, to instead asking them to please not edit further) does not work with the purpose—which is to enforce compliance, and to lay the ground for the escalating series, with an eventual block in the offing if not complied with.

The first part of the suggested change is, I think, rather tacit. Nevertheless, I am not averse as a little redundancy is sometimes useful. In short, I do think it is abundantly clear from a template—i) placed only on the talk page of a user who ii) has not disclosed their paid editing, iii) by a message telling them they need to comply with paid editing, iv) followed by instructions on how to do so and to stop editing until they either comply, or affirmatively state they aren't a paid editor—that the template is about their "undisclosed" paid editing. Again, though, I see no problem and have tweaked the front end as a result.

Second, switching the language from "financial stake" to just "paid editing" would lead to many, many denials of paid editing from paid editors in response. One problem we have, and I think it's much larger than generally realized, among not just paid editors, but regular editors as well, is that the phrase "paid editing" implies to people a much smaller scope than the policy actually covers. The vast majority of "paid editing" is not of the Orangemoody stripe. Rather, it is the people who write the hundreds of new paid editing articles we see every day without mandatory disclosure, in which the person has a "financial stake" in their edits, such as people writing about their own businesses. They are subject to the policy, but are thrown off by the phrase "paid editing", as if it only covers Orangemoody-type, paid editing. We must not reinforce that common misunderstanding. Changing "financial stake", chosen very consciously to teach the wide ambit of paid editing, to just "paid editing" in your suggested edit, does so.

Third, it is always many time over more effective to provide graspable instructions to users right in front of their faces. Secondarily referring users to some other linked page to see how they might comply would result in some stupidly high percentage of them never learning how to, that is avoided by placing the instructions directly in the template. I have seen this play out over and over. The instructions for complying must be in the template itself.

Fourth, the current end is firm but polite, and sets up a very specific dynamic, that leads into the next template in the series. Your rewrite is for more indirect, and does not set up the path to the next template. It needs to say, directly, and at the end, words to the effect of, 'do not edit further until you comply or respond'. If it does not, the next template does not follow.

The Milquetoast COI guideline, only strongly recommending... has utterly failed us. No teeth. Ignored. The only enforcement mechanism we have is the mandatory paid editing disclosure—but we haven't done anything to take advantage of it. This template series is the only attempt at an enforcement mechanism I know of. Watering it down will not serve us well, despite how impotent this template remains—because it is not in Twinkle, nor in WP:PAID—resulting from the elevation of AGF and not biting (matters I actually believe in, but not...) to near religious fervor, at the expense of all pragmatism.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:39, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

• So in the end you have decided to... reject my edit request... en toto, yes? I am sorry you think it would only result in reduced compliance, but I can't say I know you are wrong. So we will leave it there. Thanks for thinking about it, at least, and for posting a considered response. KDS4444 ^(talk) 04:03, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

I actually feel nausea now that I've realized I spent my time carefully composing the above post to you, and you're a true, Orangemoody type, paid editor. I need to take a shower.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:19, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Fuhghettaboutit: Orangemoody involved the use of SPA short-term sockpuppets and hoards of undisclosed paid edits as part of a project designed to take advantage of people by offering to republish their deleted articles in exchange for pay. If you want to assign me labels like that, it would be good if you began by understanding that I do not operate any socks, have disclosed the few paid edits I have made, have never contacted anyone with an offer to rewrite their deleted articles, and have been editing Wikipedia for eight years— which means I have almost nothing in common with the Orangemoody business other than that I have been paid. But hey, why should anyone start to listen to that now? It's much more fun to call people names and disparage their efforts. Imagine the nausea I feel at having you do this to me. I intended no ill here, used an edit-request rather than edit the template directly, have no vested interest in what happens to this template, and was not paid, directly or indirectly, by anyone to do any of it. Just like any Orangemoody editor would do, yes? (Are there any paid editors, in your imagination, who are not "Orangemoody" types? What are they like?) If you are feeling nausea, maybe it was something you ate. KDS4444 ^(talk) 04:32, 9 October 2017 (UTC)\

Getting back to the matter at hand, and although the edit request I made was not accepted, I would still like to suggest that the link to "black hat" be either changed or removed: right now it links to the Black-hat hacking section of the article on security hacker, whereas the term being used here doesn't appear to have anything to do with hacking security and looks like it may have been linked to that topic because no appropriate article exists for the concept "black hat" as it being used here (which I don't think justifies creating a link "because nothing better could be found"). The term "black hat" is used in the WP:COI policy page (where it is used to refer to "paid advocacy", not "undisclosed paid editing", which is supposed to be a different thing), but even there it has no link— so I don't see any reason to create a link here to the security hacker article, although I do agree that it would be good for us to have a WP:BLACK HAT piece that such a term could link to that actually explained what it means in terms of Wikipedia editing (But then again, I was probably paid by someone to say all that, and it is clearly self-serving for me to do so, since I don't own any black hats (although I do look good in black), so maybe it is better if we leave the link pointing to an irrelevant article section which will confuse people— yay! Progress!!). KDS4444 ^(talk) 05:04, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

(Never mind, I will just do this myself— if anyone thinks this kind of change is evidence of advocacy, they can revert it... Though that would probably be ill-advised. KDS4444 ^(talk) 06:51, 9 October 2017 (UTC))

...And for what it is worth, I agree with Kudpung that this template is overly verbose, and is a TL;DR candidate. Providing instructions is fine, but templates also need to be short and sweet or they will be ignored— this one a.) is not, and therefore b.) likely will be. KDS4444 ^(talk 07:03, 9 October 2017 (UTC))

"do not edit further until you answer this message"

Is it not true that a paid editor is free to ignore or delete the warning, silently stop accepting pay for editing Wikipedia and silently stop editing any pages that he has already been paid to edit, and move on?

Is our goal here to force them to respond to a warning template or is our goal here to either get them to stop engaging in paid editing or get them to follow our rules on paid editing (disclose, make suggestion on the talk page instead of editing the article, etc.)? --Guy Macon (talk) 04:02, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

It does seem to be a nice "get out of jail free" card for any admin looking to block UPE; "oh, you didn't respond and kept editing, so I'm allowed to block you." I can see the benefits of including it, but also agree that an editor is not obligated to respond to or otherwise acknowledge a talk page warning. Primefac (talk) 12:00, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Wording

This paragraph seems a bit clumsily worded:

"Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question if an article exists, and if it does not, . At best, any proposed article creation should be submitted through the articles for creation process, rather than directly."

How about:

"Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from direct article editing: if an article already exists they should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question; and if it does not, they should refrain from attempting to write an article at all. Any proposed article creation should be submitted through the articles for creation process, rather than directly."

--kingboyk (talk) 01:34, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Seems like an improvement. Does anyone object? If not I will make the change after waiting three days to give anyone with an objection time to respond. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:56, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Based on the punctuation I suspect that something similar was originally written there. Has anyone checked the history to see what if anything was removed? Primefac (talk) 18:53, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

When this page was created on 22 June 2015‎, that paragraph read as follows:

"Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question, if an article exists, and if it does not, from attempting to write an article at all. At best, any proposed article creation should be submitted through the articles for creation process, rather than directly."[1]

Unless my eye missed something, the only change is the removal of a comma after "the article in question". --Guy Macon (talk) 00:37, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

So is the intention to change that wording, or rewrite it based on the removal by Kingboyk above? Primefac (talk) 00:56, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

"User page" disclosure for IP addresses

The current recommendation of posting a disclosure at the user page does not work for IP addresses. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:43, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Proposed replacement for IP editors: Special:Diff/906680535/906681276. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:03, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

I have mentioned this discussion at WP:VP/T because the issue is technical and the important template is currently giving incorrect advice. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:19, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

The issue persists. Can someone with the required technical knowledge please implement a fix? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:57, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 11 October 2021

The link the terms of service should be changed to wmf:Terms of use#paid-contrib-disclosure to make it clear exactly what section needs to be changed. (and per the notice at the top, I have not been paid to edit Wikipedia). SixTwoEight (talk) 23:16, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

To editor SixTwoEight:  done. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 00:22, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Also edited {{Uw-paid2}} in like manner. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 04:39, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 11 November 2022

link to the wikimedia foundation in the wikimedia foundation regards. lettherebedarklight〔晚安 おやすみ〕ping me when replying 05:00, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

To editor ­lettherebedarklight:  edited. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^put'r there 16:18, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Edit request 8 November 2023

Maybe change "extremely strongly discouraged" to "very strongly discouraged," seems to fit the flow of the template better and just sounds better in general. Seawolf35 (talk - email) 17:26, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

We should probably just say "strongly discouraged", since this template should reflect the language in the relevant guideline. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:31, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 That too. Seawolf35 (talk - email) 19:09, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

I have removed the excessive adverbs to match the guideline. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:15, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Employment

Often when I issue this warning to new users, a convo along the following lines ensues:

• "I am not being compensated for my editing."
  • "Okay, so what is your relationship with the subject?"
• "I work for this organisation."
  • "Do they not pay you?"
• "Yes, but they do not pay me to edit Wikipedia."

I wonder if the template message ("Paid advocacy is a category of conflict of interest (COI) editing that involves being compensated by a person, group, company or organization to use Wikipedia to promote their interests.") isn't clear enough; perhaps the users interpret that as only referring to someone (PR agency, freelance copywriter, etc.) writing for their client, not writing in the course of their employment? Could we add an explicit reference to "employment" in this template? (There is one mention of "employer", but it comes only in the last para, and it may be folks don't read that far if they've already concluded this doesn't apply to them.)

Thoughts? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 10:32, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Edit request 7 June 2024

Description of suggested change: I was hoping to generate some discussion at Template_talk:Uw-paid1#Employment, but none has ensued, so cutting to the chase and making this request instead. I think the warning message isn't clear enough that employees are covered by paid-editing rules. I would like this to be said explicitly, as suggested below. (I think this is only needed in Uw-paid1, not the other levels.)

Diff:

−

Hello Uw-paid1. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, but you have not complied with Wikipedia's mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. Paid advocacy is a category of conflict of interest (COI) editing that involves being compensated by a person, group, company or organization to use Wikipedia to promote their interests. Undisclosed paid advocacy is prohibited by our policies on neutral point of view and what Wikipedia is not, and is an especially serious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat search-engine optimization.

+

Hello Uw-paid1. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, but you have not complied with Wikipedia's mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. Paid editing occurs when writing about your employer or client, regardless of whether you are expressly paid to edit Wikipedia. Paid advocacy is a category of conflict of interest (COI) editing that involves being compensated by a person, group, company or organization to use Wikipedia to promote their interests. Undisclosed paid advocacy is prohibited by our policies on neutral point of view and what Wikipedia is not, and is an especially serious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat search-engine optimization.

DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:16, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it fits into this context and the Paid editing disclosure policy does not support the wording of what is being proposed here. Maybe {{uw-coi}} would be a better place to put it? Sohom (talk) 14:38, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta: can you elaborate, please?

Why do you think the policy doesn't support the wording? The policy says

Employer: the person or organization that pays, either directly or through intermediaries, a user to contribute to Wikipedia. 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.

That clearly includes employment situations, but the uw-paid notice sounds like it only means some 'hired gun' you've found on Fiverr.

And uw-coi is absolutely not a better place for it. The confusion arises specifically when the uw-paid warning is issued. This happens to me at least a couple of times a week, too, so I'm not talking about some isolated incident. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:46, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

@DoubleGrazing The Paid editing disclosure guidelines specifically mention A paid contribution is one that involves contributing to Wikipedia in exchange for money or other inducements. If a person is not being compensated specifically for edits to/on Wikipedia, that falls under conflict of interest (which has similar disclosure requirements and edit restrictions but is not explicitly covered under the terms of use). Sohom (talk) 15:03, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

To expand more, somebody explicitly hired as a software engineer at Google has a conflict of interest against Google (and should clearly disclose and follow those guidelines when contributing to articles about Google products) but is not covered by the much stricter Paid editing disclosure guideline. Sohom (talk) 15:08, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not talking about software engineers, and I would agree they don't come under PAID, at least not automatically. The ones I usually come across are invariably in some sort of digital marketing, SEO, or communications role, or in the case of smaller businesses the owner/founder. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 15:12, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Founders and CEOs would be covered by COI, for the rest, I think an argument can be made for marketing and PR agencies, but the phrasing above is too broad in that it would cover effective everyone employed at a company. Sohom (talk) 15:39, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for elaborating, @Sohom Datta. That's not my understanding, I believe employees are automatically covered, whether they have specifically been told to edit Wikipedia, or are doing it as part of their overall role (usually in the marketing team or similar). But I'm happy to wait for others to weigh in on this. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 15:10, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta: I agree with DoubleGrazing. I have run across marketing employees who were not paid specifically to edit Wikipedia, but editing Wikipedia would be considered a legitimate PR activity to do on the job, even if the employee's job description doesn't mention Wikipedia at all.

Likewise, I have encountered freelance PR agents who aren't being paid by their clients specifically to edit Wikipedia, but doing so may be required among the services the agent provides to tidy up personal information found on the internet. The client basically says "I don't like certain information about me being public, here's some money, take care of it" — and if that means a Wikipedia article might need editing in the course of that work, so be it. I've lost count of the number of times these editors tell me, basically, "I'm not being paid by my client to edit Wikipedia" as if that's a way to get around the paid editing disclosure.

These situations definitely fall under paid editing. It isn't merely an employee of a company writing about their employer. It's someone whose job it is to manage public relations and perceptions. ~Anachronist (talk) 16:27, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

@Anachronist As I mentioned in the last comment above, I don't have a issue with marketers and advertisers being considered paid editor, however the wording as proposed is waaay to broad and implies that every employee of a company should have a paid banner. Sohom (talk) 18:30, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Then propose something else besides the status quo, which isn't acceptable. The proposed sentence is

Paid editing occurs when writing about your employer or client, regardless of whether you are expressly paid to edit Wikipedia.

How about something like this instead, which would cover marketers and PR people and even CEOs:

Paid editing occurs when your job function includes conveying or suppressing public information about your client or company, regardless of whether you are paid to edit Wikipedia.

Some wordsmithing might be in order but something like that would fix a glaring hole in the message that results in people telling me they aren't being paid to edit Wikipedia, when public communication about the employer or client falls squarely within the job description. ~Anachronist (talk) 19:06, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I suggest

−

Paid advocacy is a category of conflict of interest (COI) editing that involves being compensated by a person, group, company or organization to use Wikipedia to promote their interests.

+

Paid advocacy is a category of conflict of interest (COI) editing that involves being compensated by a person, group, company or organization to promote their interests. Paid advocacy on Wikipedia must be disclosed even if you have not specifically been asked to edit Wikipedia.

SilverLocust 💬 19:19, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I would support @SilverLocust's version. (I was about to propose something very similar at the sandbox) Maybe we can even put the Paid advocacy on Wikipedia must be disclosed even if you have not specifically been asked to edit Wikipedia. line in bold? Sohom (talk) 20:21, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

That's fine with me, especially if that added line is in boldface. It's better than the current template as it is now. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:58, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

While I'm not opposed to that, and certainly am not insisting that my proposal was perfect (far from it!), I would still like the word employ* to also appear there somehow. In my experience, two things about the current message confuse users: 1) paid-editing covers also employment (in many/most cases, if not all), not just agency/freelance/etc. work, and 2) it covers being paid to edit generally as well as specifically. This version deals with the latter point well, but only that. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 06:01, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

How about something like?

−

Paid advocacy is a category of conflict of interest (COI) editing that involves being compensated by a person, group, company or organization to use Wikipedia to promote their interests.

+

Paid advocacy is a category of conflict of interest (COI) editing that involves being employed (or being compensated in any way) by a person, group, company or organization to promote their interests. '''Paid advocacy on Wikipedia must be disclosed even if you have not specifically been asked to edit Wikipedia.'''

Feel free to wordsmith this if you feel like the text needs refinement. Sohom (talk) 19:29, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I've also mentioned this at the AfC project talk, in case anyone else there wants to chip in. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 15:50, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

@DoubleGrazing: I've made the above changes. It seems like there is a small consensus for them. If broader discussion brings a consensus to change them further or to revert, feel free to {{ping}} me. Since the notice was just placed at AfC, I have not yet removed the edit request. If you're seeking broader input, you may also want to place the notice at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard and Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 16:21, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I do not see any reason to bold that particular sentence. It is no more important than the rest of the message. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:43, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I think it is a good summary of the point of the paragraph. If somebody skims through the text without reading everything the three things highlighted are " Paid advocacy on Wikipedia must be disclosed even if you have not specifically been asked to edit Wikipedia.", "required by the Wikimedia Terms of Use to disclose your employer, client and affiliation" and "do not edit further" which I think are effectively what we want the notice to say. Sohom (talk) 17:10, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I support the amended text. This will certainly help when dealing with internal marketing people. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 18:55, 18 June 2024 (UTC)