User talk:Ocaasi/Seren

Comments on WikiProject Cooperation

Hello, Ocaasi and lurkers, and thanks for this page. Let's see where this project member stands. I had similar questions at WT:COI but this might be a better page for discussion. I should also say that such a conversation might turn into proposed edits to COI, but let's discuss that when we get there.

• Yes on existence of both Paid Advocacy Watch and Cooperation, good complements, and to each his or her own.
• Yes, don't autoblock (disclosed) paid editors, block disruptively promotional editors. Warn those merely imbalancedly promotional editors and block on repeat. Autoblocks worsen the problem, WikiProjects relieve it, more relief should be forthcoming.
• Yes, autoblock promotional editors with promotional usernames, WP:SPAMNAME, even if only merely imbalanced. This policy is straightforward and a company can always move to or create a new name (although one would think it'd be good to have the block undone, with a link from the log, upon promises and good behavior; such blocks need not remain indef). Do not block unless both name and editing are promotional.
• Yes on Paid Editor Help even though it can become Yet Another Forum. I will probably use it myself.
• No on constant trend, because there is hope for controversies calming, they need not plateau but can taper. See comments passim for ideas, particularly rerouting our volunteers. It is simply a matter of the Community handling one of its biggest challenges square, which it has always gotten around to doing sooner or later in other cases: this will someday cause the taper. So in particular, here's a publishable question:
  • What trends in policy and guideline improvement do you think would make the welcoming of conflicted editors more likely to result in compliant, constructive consensus editing? And how can we motivate more regulars to get involved with conflicted editors? A good community self-check question.
• Yes on fully understanding Jimbo's stance. But:
• Questions on brightline. User:Hypothetical has vast financial and labor resources and wants ethical but admittedly biased movement of Wikipedia content. Lots of other editors edit freely and manage their own personal biases well. WP has no means to prevent User:Hypothetical from training staff to try to do the same: to edit ethically and neutrally enough and to use alternate accounts in both legitimate and borderline ways, which include mainspace edits. It seems that if the "altnet" keeps separated and works hard to avoid user conflicts, they are "legitimately improving content toward greater encyclopedicity and neutrality", but if they get into even one user conflict while trying to stay clean (even if all use of COI disclosures and "legit socks" were letter-perfect), then the same mainspace edits may easily become "biasing content toward promotional interests". Now we know community overrides either or both of the users in conflict, but one user conflict incident has an effect of encouraging many other uninvolved users to see whether they have cause for becoming a user in a second conflict with someone who's already down, and so WP has a procedural bias that favors such pile-ons, but that's point two.
  • Doesn't AGF suggest that an undisclosed editor should be treated as an unconflicted editor managing personal bias like everyone else? If any editor without disclosures is held to have an undisclosed conflict (with or without evidence or outing), shouldn't that question be moot because the real question is whether any bad behavior ensued? If yes, I think this may well be one of the majority's silent rationales for rejecting the brightline. What if a user had no conflict and was held to have one, solely due to multiple cases of mis- or dis-info? Then they would mount a defense not much different from the editor who did have one. The first accusation plus the snowball effect may well make one non-COI editor fare worse than another COI editor. Ordinary scrutiny of questionable behavior with apologies for miscommunication and thankfulness for the education all around, that is good WP flow. Mixing such scrutiny with COI claims as if such claims aggravate the other unproven charges, that is the problem. In short, whether they come from policy or community pressure, forced disclosures are valueless; the only useful disclosures are voluntary. Because this is true, how can anyone ever absolutely rule out paid editors from major mainspace edits? Force against their equal right to manage their own bias will never work. Only persuasion will. In fact, one might say the whole problem is not COI editing, but established-community reaction against certain editors who have a natural tendency to much stronger interests than others: the rich, the corporate, the powerful, the famous. WP is all for leveling the ground (e.g. against "campaign bundling"), but not for the powerful having fewer rights than others. And point two:
  • Shouldn't we move the redirect WP:PILEON to an essay or guideline warning users against the unconscious bias toward kicking editors who are down? Would this be one backend method, among many, of creating a more welcoming environment for conflicted editors? It's natural metooism to say "and I got a splinter", and it should be curbed to some degree. Totally identical charges do aggravate a case because they double (or triple) the user warning level; but unrelated charges should not be encouraged, nor should connecting disparate dots. The applicable point being that when the ethical paid editor runs afoul the first time, he or she risks extra-disproportionate newbie-biting. (Other newbies are bit only mildly disproportionately.) One of the harmony-seeking steps I believe in is clearer guidance, and this occurred to me as one example of redirecting editors via guidance to defuse controversies before the bitten newbie throws all compliance out with the bathwater and returns with a Wiki-PR vengeance.
• One other point occurs to me about AGF:
  • If a conflicted newcomer intends to edit ethically but without disclosure, but then unintentionally outs himself or herself, thus revealing the conflict, shouldn't this be handled as an unintentional omission that should be repaired by (preferably) disclosure or (possibly) management via revision deletions; and not handled as an intentional desire to thwart disclosure rules? We see this pretty frequently and these are just the kind of newcomers who need enfolding and not driving away, but so often they are treated as deliberate policy flouts.
• Yes, yes, vast critical mass of ethical paid editors exists, and over the years that factor has been gaining strength, and continuing to harness it will work in favor of resolution and lowered controversy trend.
• Yes on CREWE, no one should pin any malfeasance on them, nor anything more than a smattering of misfeasances if that; yes on everything you say about them.
• Big yes on watch, tag, SPI, increase vigilance, etc. And the whole ethic of increasing community vigilance such as by WikiProjects and essays and village discussions should continue the downward trend in controversy that we all hope for.
• No on Arbcom inevitable and I would edit that sentence, as it currently says logically that COI mainspace editing always leads to sanctions. Rather, COI mainspace editing plus bad behavior is always noncompliant and is sanctioned whenever caught. But COI mainspace editing in good faith has often led to sanctions and short-term failure to resolve the good-faith misunderstanding.
• Yes, improve simplicity and clarity of editing guidelines, and maybe WP Adventure helps. But we've presumably been doing that (improving) all along.
• Yes, advocacy is by definition a noncompliant behavior, paid or unpaid.
• Yes, past examples do poison the well. Rulebreaking paid editors, and rulebreaking advocacy groups, bias regulars against all of them. One very constructive step, in addition to the PR folks and CREWE stepping up, is for Wikipedians to step up and admit, er, a bigger problem with WP:BITE than previously believed. My idea is that many routes of redirecting our volunteers toward community-building behavior would coalesce toward WP's side being freer of blame. That's the only way to heal the memories of past bad actors: mutual reaching out and each accepting his or her own past oversights.
• Emphatic yes, update COI "to be more clear and to also more properly explain what kind of editing is and is not proper within the COI rules."
• Logically, no, I think I must conclude COI disclosure must be strongly encouraged, NOT required, because being persuaded to disclose always trumps being forced to disclose. Why disclose under duress, when one can always not disclose and claim one's major mainspace edits arise merely from an "ethical undisclosed legitimately segregated alternate account"? But though it's logical, I haven't convinced my heart. The right view is almost, "Look, we appeal to your native ethics that of course you would want a polite, nondescript disclosure, who wouldn't?" But that too seems not to work because the conflicted party infers and hears, "If you can't agree with us on this your ethics are so strained as to make you incapable of editing communally." There are enough people with enough different ethics from me to make only the broadest statements (e.g. using verifiability rather than truth) agreeable to the majority, and this one isn't broad enough yet. And the voice of the person who would answer the question (or who would infer the subtext) has been suppressed, so it's hard to carry out the whole conversation to resolution.
• Not quite agreed with your answer to crack down harsher on paid editors because it commits the fuzziness error, but you seem aware to not committing the error elsewhere. Your "no" is correct because we should reach out more, and more welcomingly, to paid editors. But then you reject cracking down harsher on "unethical paid editors", which should be an emphatic yes instead. Crack down harsher on any unethical behavior visible anywhere onwiki; e.g. 3RR is a good rule but user warnings go to 4 or 5 and sometimes you gotta skip the triple-dare and go directly to the triple-dog-dare or whatever it is. Yet another way WP should be broadly improved that only happens when enough people see the vision through broad policy and talk agreement.
• Emphatic yes, subtler vandalism and sneakier unethical paid editing DO sort themselves out in time. And they are partly caused by misguided policy and followthrough.
• Yes, we're finally mitigating the corporate gap.
• Good analysis of list of wiki bias problems, but "lack of civility" should be higher, and "lack of southerners" should be extended to other wiki-destitute parts of the Northern Hemisphere as well.
• Applaud deep-felt opposition to secrecy that leads to people being harmed in any way.
• Applaud compromise that satisfies both sides and thanks for your and WWB's example.
• Yes, the whole goal is that expansion of WikiProject Cooperation will also come about, along with policy and guideline clarification in the area of paid editing.

See disclosures: Frieda Beamy (talk) 18:34, 30 May 2014 (UTC)