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Wikidata:Requests for comment/Alternate disclosure policy

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The original proposal by Olaf Kosinsky to allow paid contributions without disclosure was just supported by one user. The new proposal by ChristianKl was supported by six users. User:ChristianKl/Draft:Disclosure of paid editing is therefore adopted. --Ameisenigel (talk) 06:47, 17 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
An editor has requested the community to provide input on "Alternate disclosure policy" via the Requests for comment (RFC) process. This is the discussion page regarding the issue.

If you have an opinion regarding this issue, feel free to comment below. Thank you!


THIS RFC IS CLOSED. Please do NOT vote nor add comments.

The Wikidata community does not require any disclosure of paid contributions from its contributors.

The Wikimedia #4._Refraining_from_Certain_Activities terms of use prohibit paid contributions without disclosure, but allow project communities to adopt an alternative policy. The Wikidata community has not yet decided on this. Discussions have taken place in other projects; the Wikimedia Commons community, for example, has decided on a paid contribution disclosure policy not requiring any disclosure for paid edits. The same applies to all to contributions to all projects and software, including MediaWiki. --Olaf Kosinsky (talk) 15:51, 7 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would support enacting the Commons policy here as well. I'm far more interested in judging the quality of contributions, and if paid editors are contributing good data that's fine by me. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 15:18, 14 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Olaf Kosinsky: with kosinsky.eu you operate your own agency for paid Wikipedia editing. Have you made any paid edits here, on Wikidata? Which form of disclosure did you choose? And most importantly, why do you want to deviate from the global policy of requiring disclosure? (You don't give any reasoning in the RFC text.) Pyfisch (talk) 19:51, 14 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for pointing out massive and NOT disclosed conflict of interest! @Olaf Kosinsky: - attempting to hide that you have a giant conflict of interest makes clear that you are not doing it to improve Wikidata but for your interest, that is likely in conflict with Wikidata community interest. Also "The Wikidata community does not require any disclosure of paid contributions from its contributors." is misleading, as Wikimedia terms of use apply Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:17, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd prefer to see the quite comprehensive Wikidata:Code of conduct (draft) discussed and perhaps agreed upon here. It includes a brief statement on disclosures which I think is the general consensus: "Editing with a conflict of interest (especially undisclosed) - one should not create items about oneself or people or organizations close to one, and only add statements that have a reliable reference when editing such items"  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by ArthurPSmith (talk • contribs) at 19:13, September 15, 2020 (UTC).
  • Given that Wikidata doesn't have it's own policy the Wikimedia terms of service are binding to Wikidata and the Wikidata community does require paid disclosure. To improve the clarity that the disclosure policy is binding, it might be a good idea to copy it into a Wikidata document. If a person is employed to edit Wikidata, that's information that's of interest to other Wikidata editors and it's good when it's available.
This is not only important for bad edits. If an a library has a Wikimedian in Residence that edits for the library it's good to know for other Wikidata editors that the library is represented by the given Wikimedian in Residence even if all the edits he makes are helpful.
If any institution interacts with Wikidata, there's a good chance that a user might want to community with whoever is responsible in the institution for editing Wikidata. Disclosure of the affiliation on a user page facillitates that. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 11:00, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I am a paid editor, in the sense that I'm using Wikidata for my work as a research assistant. I am writing queries and editing items as part of my job and I state so on my user page. I think that it does not cause harm to honest contributors, if they have to disclose, whether they are paid to edit. So far, I didn't have the feeling that people would dislike my contributions because I'm paid to edit, but I think that everyone has a right to know it. I would be in favor of explicitly stating the necessity of disclosure in a Wikidata policy -- Dr.üsenfieber (talk) 08:09, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Admin from the Wikidata deletion department here. We see a very noticable rise of new promotional items recently that are often highly problematic with respect to the notability policy, and usually barely any of their content is verifiable by Wikidata standards. "Creating a Wikidata item" seems to be a standard service by so-called "web reputation agencies" meanwhile, as the general notion in the industry is that a Wikidata item boosts your Google ranking. Some of these companies also abuse Wikimedia Commons to establish Wikidata notability. So, I'd only support a "paid editing policy" that explicitly requires full disclosure; in other words: what is required by the WMF ToU anyways. ---MisterSynergy (talk) 12:24, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I created a draft for a disclosure policy that basically reaffirms the terms of use: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:ChristianKl/Draft:Disclosure_of_paid_editing while adding the opportunity to do disclosure via Wikiproject given that this is another channel of our communication on Wikidata. @MisterSynergy, Dr.üsenfieber, Pyfisch, Olaf Kosinsky, Ajraddatz: Any feedback for the draft? I would create a new RfC for it's adoption. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 14:11, 7 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • IMHO there are too many places where a user can state their paid contributions, making it hard to actually find either contributions or the required statement. Since many items are within the scope of multiple WikiProjects it is unclear where to look for a disclosure. The disclosure could be useful to a) find out if a given contribution was paid for b) monitoring activity by paid users for promotional content c) contacting users working at GLAM or other companies to discuss cooperation and other matters. But your proposal doesn't to make this easy. I would support a mandatory unobnoxious template for user pages that informs visitors that the user is employed by a given organization and that their edits are made for this organization. --Pyfisch (talk) 19:44, 7 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would say disclosure on user page should be required as a minimum; optional but at times desired to also declare in other locations. A plain-text explanation of what areas they edit and why should be acceptable: have templates for convenience, but they needn't be mandatory. If a user's page on Meta is not overridden and is included across multiple projects, is a declaration there sufficient? Pelagic (talk) 09:26, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Someone using WD for the first time likely wouldn't know about the any rules or policy regarding paid editing in the first place. How would you solve this?@Pelagic:--Trade (talk) 11:48, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not sure
    • I am a Wikimedian in Residence at a University School of Data Science. Part of what I do is edit Wikidata. I am happy to disclose.
    • I look at OpenStreetMap and see huge volunteer community encroachment by paid editors. I predict the same will happen to Wikidata. I think Wikidata needs some policy in place to prevent corporate capture of the sort that OpenStreetMap experienced. Wikidata is much more susceptible to commercial takeover than Wikipedia because contributors are relatively fewer and business editors have much more financial backing.
    • I have no idea what kinds of conflicts Wikidata currently experiences with commercial editors.
    • I wish to avoid or prevent unclear or miscommunication that English Wikipedia and others have had in this space. In my opinion, "paid editing" is a poor choice of term, because it conflates editing to share general knowledge from a library or university with editing to do marketing and promotion for public relations. To me these are different enough to merit different terms, but the custom in English Wikipedia is that too often, paid university librarians get grouped as "paid editors" along with sleazy marketers, when I think we should lower barriers of access for librarians but raise barriers of access for marketers. I prefer some term like "paid promotion" versus "sponsored editing", where both perform disclosure but otherwise have different expectations.
Thanks for starting the discussion. Blue Rasberry (talk) 02:33, 25 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Bluerasberry: If we make a distinction like that and a librarian starts editing an item about their library we suddenly have a rules violation. Having a broader category and focus the rules on providing disclosure instead of barriers seems to me less limiting. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 22:32, 25 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@ChristianKl: I acknowledge that Wikidata is not currently experiencing or identifying significant problems but I have fear that problems will arise in the future and that when we advance policy, we create some options for responding to danger. I see a few dangers: Wikidata repeating English Wikipedia mistakes and adopting long-term ineffective paid editing policy which wastes volunteer labor hours, the OpenStreetMap example of paid editors claiming equality with volunteers to the benefit of business interests, and the Wikimedia Foundation's worrying understatement of the meta:Okapi project to sell Wikidata and Wikimedia content through a WMF-owned commercial company. Details on Okapi are sparse, but the rumor is that the WMF will sell data for US$20 million / year, which I feel is part of a WMF plan to encourage OSM-style commercialization and corporate participation. Information is lacking and again, Wikidata does not currently have problems, but I feel strongly about Wikidata remaining volunteer-oriented and volunteer governed. After the volunteers I want to let in academics, including paid university researchers like me. Beyond volunteers and academics there is an ecosystem of players who want to pay a lot of money to Okapi, and if and when Wikidata becomes commercialized, I advocate for strong barriers and no assumption of good faith from commercial players who will definitely have motivations unlike the volunteer friendly environment we have now. I am very comfortable with librarians getting one rule set and professionals in the corporate world getting a more restrictive one. Blue Rasberry (talk) 00:10, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see anything in the Okapi document that's about governance. At the moment our Query service has a timeout. I see no problem with selling usage of the Query server without timeouts to entities that are willing to pay for the required capacity.
The same goes for an API that gives access to the last version of an item that was edited by a auto-confirmed user or a similar standard.
I think a world where Apple does pay some money to the WMF for Wikidata usage by Siri and where Google also pays, is better then a world where those entities just reuse our data without giving anything back.
What kind of commercial agenda's are you afraid will come with Okapi that aren't good for Wikidata?
When it comes to making rules there's a tradeoff between added complexity and being able to handle more cases. Most of the time complexity is added for reason that seem sensible but in the end all the rules are complex and very bureaucratic. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 21:13, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@ChristianKl: I advocate for a community conversation.
The narrative from the Wikimedia Foundation is that with this change, money will come in but nothing else will change. I would like expectations formalized, because I doubt that outcome. In the case of OpenStreetMap, their content has commercial value. Entities which sell OSM content now have outsized influence in all activities of the OSM project. They participate in discussions, comment on matters of ethics and values, and when they join community activities they have outsized influence and prominence over the volunteer community because of their access to money and administrative staff.
What I predict of Okapi is first there will be a promise that nothing will change, then that will shift to promises that commercial voices in the mix will not change community activities, and then companies will be paying professionals to advocate for commercial interests in conversations which previously only had Wikimedia volunteer community participation. When professionals join community conversations, then the Wikimedia Movement will shift from advocacy for readers to advocacy for commercial interests. I posted a bit on OSM at Meta.
meta:Talk:OpenStreetMap#Community_organization_-_commercial_contributors_-_OSM_and_Wiki
I see this as a complicated issue. By default and until and unless there is well organized community conversation otherwise, I advocate for (1) strong disclosure and (2) prohibition by default for representatives of corporations to join Wikimedia community discussion. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:54, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That's leading a little too far away from the original topic, but I would express my concerns in selling prioritized API access without timeouts. One of the main goals of Wikimedia in my opinion is the removal of barriers blocking free knowledge transfer. It should be equally possible to run a query for a poor CS-student from Serbia, and the CTO of a SEO company.
As to the differentiation between «Sponsored Contributers» and «paid promoters»: I don't see any real benefits of this differentiation and a lot of possible loopholes. Marketers could be arguing how they somehow are in fact sponsored contributers, while Wikimedians in resident might in some circumstances violate the restrictions. I feel like just disclosing the employer is enough. If a user states that they're paid by a library or university, they probably won't be perceived as paid marketer. -- Dr.üsenfieber (talk) 03:06, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The question isn't so much about whether the CTO of a SEO company should have API access without timeout to Wikidata. They can easily download the dumb of Wikidata and run their own Wikibase instance and make all the queries they want without timeouts. The question is whether they are allowed to pay the money to WMF for that or whether they are only allowed to pay that money to an employee or outsourced entity. The question is should only the people who can pay for the hardware and configuration for their own mirror of Wikibase or whether it should also be simply accessed by paying for the server costs that the WMF has for providing the service (and paying a lot more then the cost).
If we have such an API we likely can also have policy where the poor CS-student from Serbia can describe is project and get an approval for using the API for it. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 14:22, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ajraddatz: --Trade (talk) 08:32, 29 September 2021 (UTC)can we get a conclusion?[reply]

Propose close. 18 months on, there appears to be no clear consensus and the discussion has stalled. The original poster, User:Olaf Kosinsky, has meanwhile been caught in an undisclosed paid editing scandal featured on German national TV, resulting in his permanent ban from multiple Wikimedia projects — see this Sept 2021 Signpost article. I propose that the present RfC be closed without a conclusion now. -- Ariadacapo (talk) 07:36, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Ariadacapo: Surely "closed without a conclusion" just leaves the current status quo of having no Wikidata specific policy and therefore being bound to the Wikimedia terms of service anyway (i.e. disclosure is required)? So deciding not to make a decision on this is the same thing as making a decision, just with less clarity. SilentSpike (talk) 22:56, 15 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. --Ariadacapo (talk) 10:58, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how one can read this page and consider the discussion to be inconclusive. As far as I can tell, there is exactly one user, Ajraddatz, explicitly opposing the requirement for disclosure. There are a few that have very little feelings on the subject, and an overwhelming majority that agrees on essentially copying the Wikimedia precedent. There is a bit of confusion because it's a choice between at least three options, with some people "opposing" the initial suggestion at the top to implement a no-disclosure policy. Karl Oblique (talk) 08:56, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it makes a lot more sense to close it in consensus to adopt https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:ChristianKl/Draft:Disclosure_of_paid_editing ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 06:27, 14 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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