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Requests for comment/Interlinking of accounts involved with paid editing to decrease impersonation

Draft

Statement of issue

The issue that the proposal seeks to address is that of paid editors falsely claiming to be particular established Wikipedians, Wikipedians in good standing, or Wikipedians with certain rights and abilities. There are sites such as Fiverr and Upwork where they advertise for work editing Wikipedia.

The proposer claims that sites such as these would be willing to remove accounts making such false claims. The proposal is therefore to require paid editors to provide a link on their Wikipedia user page to any accounts that they operate on external sites like Fiverr and Upwork.

The intention then is that where there is no link from the Wikipedia user page, it would allow us to ask external sites to take down accounts that make what would be visible as a false claim.

Analysis

There are currently 89 supports and 34 opposes. That is a 72% support rate, but the arguments are more important than raw numbers.

Most of the supports can be presumed to be "per nom", although Jytdog makes the point the burden involved is comprable to what the organisations at en:Wikipedia:Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms already do. In addition, some sympathy was expressed with opposers who had privacy concerns.

The oppose votes, on the other hand, raised several different, well expressed concerns. I'll try to summarise some of these.

Fae has concerns that there would be a requirement to keep these proposed links indefinitely even if a paid editor ceases to edit for pay. But also a concern that if the period were time-limited, having too short a period would open up the possibility of abuse. The propose suggested that there would be a time limit, but it seems clear that the exact period after paid editing had ceased would need to be determined.

Andy Mabbett expressed a concern, echoed by others, that a side-effect of the requirement might be to victimise innocent editors who are being impersonated on external sites. When being impersonated, having to then defend oneself against suspicions is already problematical; this proposal could be used as an additional "stick" by accusing an editor of not linking to an external account, when it does not actually belong to them.

Bilby makes the point, echoed by others, that a link such as is proposed would force a paid editor to link to their personal information on an external site, despite their preference to edit pseudonymously on Wikipedia.

Ajraddatz notes that there is a convention which expects something like 80% support to establish clear consensus.

Other opposes seemed to be based on venue (meta rather than each individual Wikipedia) or the supposition that it would be unenforceable.

Conclusions

Nobody argued that there was no problem with paid editors making false claims on external sites. Evidence of the problem was presented and I find consensus that the issue should be dealt with if possible.

Some of the opposes were related specifically to the implementation of this proposal, rather than its principle.

In raw numbers, the proposed wording enjoys a super-majority of support, albeit short of a raw 80%. However, I would not be prepared to give much weight to opposes with weak reasons such as "paranoid witchhunt". I find that some of the oppose arguments to be sufficiently weak that, based on strength of argument, there is a consensus in favour of the proposal.

Nevertheless, there are some concrete concerns with significant rationales that need to be addressed in the implementation of the proposal. I recommend that there be supplementary guidelines produced to:

1. specify the minimum time period that a link has to be maintained after an advertisement for paid editing has closed (and I would suggest a period of perhaps seven days);
2. make it clear that on-wiki accusations of "failing to provide a link" without evidence is considered harassment and is thereby sanctionable;
3. make clear to paid editors that Wikimedia's commitment to support pseudonymous editing does not extend to disclosures made on external sites that we require paid editors to link to.

Summary of analysis from offline

Duplicate !vote:

• 53

Total: 1

Weak Supports / Caveats:

• 12, 17, 38, 82, 84

Total: 5

Supports:

• Remainder

Total: 83

Opposes:

• 1 - Clean start/time-limited, etc. Needs to be addressed in implementation.
• 4, 28, 29 - Genuine concern that WiRs need reassurance.
• 5, 7, 11, 22, 24 - Privacy concern.
• 8, 34 - Does not accept any problem exists.
• 9 - Accepts the problem; disagrees with proposal over privacy.
• 10 - Disagrees with wording.
• 15 - "Not Wikipedia's business"
• 16, 19 - "Too many unnecessary rules"
• 17 - Asserts CoI policy is so different between projects that this is not suitable for all wikis. (No example given}.
• 18 - Doesn't think proposal is relevant to the problem.
• 20 - "Won't fix anything" and "will penalize honest paid editors"
• 21 - "Completely unenforceable and simply burdens those who are already playing by the rules"
• 26 - "Statement is weak" and "can't see how proposal will help".
• 27 - Concern over what is meant by "all other active accounts through which they advertise paid Wikipedia editing business".
• 32 - Concern over sanctioning on Wikipedia.

Total: 23

• 2 - Based on you have no way to verify that two accounts on two different systems is controlled by the same person, which is what the proposal seeks to address. Little weight.
• 3, 13, 14 - Bald oppose. Little weight.
• 6 - "As unworkable and unenforceable" assertion. Little weight.
• 11 - Incomprehensible. Little weight.
• 23 - "Wikimedia communities have no right to make rules outside their projects". Little weight.
• 25 - Doesn't "actually understand the wording of the proposal". Little weight.
• 30 - "Meta shouldn't be trying to make rules for specific projects". Little weight.
• 31 - "Technical impossible". Little weight.
• 33 - Off-topic rant. Little weight.

Total: 11

83 / (83 + 23) = 78%

85.5 / (85.5 + 28.5) = 75%