Wikibooks:Reading room/Proposals/2014/August

Alternative paid contribution disclosure policy

I’ve already started a discussion on the issue at v:Wikiversity:Colloquium#Alternative paid contribution disclosure policy, and intend to do the same at Russian Wikibooks and Wikiversity just as well.

I believe that the paid contributions disclosure policy effected by the Foundation is broad enough to potentially affect anyone who happens to collaborate on Wikibooks as part of their class assignments, for the text of the policy seems to make no exception for, say, getting a course credit when compensation is mentioned. (As part of these obligations, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.)

To stress it out, – it’s my understanding of the policy that anyone using Wikibooks as part of one’s class assignment, must, from now on, disclose his or her affiliation (as in: school) in at least one of the following ways: a statement on [one’s] user page, a statement on the talk page accompanying any paid contributions, or a statement in the edit summary accompanying any paid contributions.

And while I agree that it may be expected for the instructor to inform the community of the forthcoming class assignments to be performed on Wikibooks, I feel it grossly inappropriate for the students’ (accidental) failure to report their affiliation to be deemed breach of the Terms of Use.

Fortunately, it’s explicitly allowed for any individual Wikimedia wiki to adopt its own, alternative policy, to be used in place of the global one, by means of the community consensus. One such policy has recently been implemented at the Wikimedia Commons, and reads: The Wikimedia Commons community does not require any disclosure of paid contributions from its contributor.

I hereby propose that a similarly relaxed, or perhaps identical, alternative paid contributions policy is adopted for the English Wikibooks just as well.

FTR, Commons seem to be the only project to adopt an alternative paid contribution disclosure policy so far.

— Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 18:34, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

As I indicated in my vote a while ago, all paid-for editing should be completely banned. Why does anyone support it? Is it an American thing? The whole concept is completely against the spirit of Wikimedia. Paid contributions and donations from commercial organizations should never be permitted. I really don't understand the above post. Why would a student be making paid-for edits? The vast majority of universities are not profit-making organizations. Please re-word the above proposal (or comments) in terms that ordinary, especially non-American, readers can understand.--ЗAНИA ^talk 22:33, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

This isn't about paid-for editing. I see the change to the terms of use as a wedge for persons of dubious faith to use to drive others out of wikimedia. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 22:49, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@Xania: Students (probably) don't get money for editing but they do get credit. So they receive some compensation for creating content here (or at Wikipedia or elsewhere). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:05, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

That’s the point. But otherwise, if some corporation decides to, say, publish a manual for their product here on Wikibooks, do we really have a problem with that? — Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 06:44, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't believe we need any agreement regarding clarification/interpretation on the new changes unless there is some point that must be made to address an issue on our project. I think I understand the point being made and I would agree that without clearly stating it any contribution (work) for compensation could be described as a paid contribution (it needn't only to involve money), there are plenty of examples of paid work (writing work) on the WEB that does not linearly translate into what we generally accept as a monetary transaction, from reviews being done because the reviewer gets a free copy of the product to the academia that must produce work for credit or even tenure all can indeed be described as an economic relation, a transaction.

In any case I don't think that our project is one that is impacted by problematic paid-for editing (we normally ban most form of contributions that are clearly marked as only having economic interests and we avoid most contemporaneous turf wars in our existing policies and those that escape that fall into a POV issues that can easily be fixed by the next editor). Here free content is king, whatever the origin and by design we only accept useful content so I can't envision us getting into problems like those that must exist in other more generalist and contemporaneous Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Wikinews or Commons).

So far in my view this is no a problem that needs fixing in this project. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 03:47, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Could you please clarify what you do not consider a problem that needs fixing in this project: is it receiving compensation (which I agree is not a problem), or is it that disclosure is now mandatory for all the edits that one receives, or expect to receive, compensation for (which I believe is a problem)? — Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 06:44, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I doubt that you will have any people needing to comply to the disclosure requirement and then even less chances to verify any breach of that same requirement in this project. So I don't see it as a problem at all unless people start to take the meaning of paid-for editing beyond what is intended (it is clear what Wikimedia is objecting too, there is no need to take it further). They just need a way to pull out some abusive people that have an economic interest liked to their participation and so have an incentive to spend some coinage in legal actions, this serves only to avoid legal procedures when they get banned.

Even if I don't see it as a problem on this project we may have some from a reverse side, in global bans that eject editors that are indeed contributing valid and acceptable content here but being abusive of their freedoms elsewhere. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 07:25, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

We may argue about the intent, but the wording of the policy is pretty clear: a student who participates in Wikibooks with the intent of getting a course credit (compensation) and failing to make it clear as required (disclosure) is in breach of the ToU, and may thus be subject to legal action from WMF.

Do I understand it correctly that you suggest we should just keep our eyes closed on any such breach, until and unless there’re other issues with one’s contributions?

Otherwise, I agree that the current disclosure policy is essentially unenforceable. But that’s one more reason to supersede it with a relaxed local policy, – just as the Commons community did.

— Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 07:42, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I am also concerned with the danger that this over-generally-worded provision in the ToU would be used maliciously as a weapon against individuals, including long-standing memebers of the project. Granted, afaik Wikibooks has not so far been the target of as much of this sort of nonsense as, say, Wikinews — Wikinews is the target of dirty politics routinely (for example, a while ago over at meta somebody tried to amend the project-closure policy specifically to make it easier to close Wikinews projects) — but that could change, and I believe it would be wise for us to close this loophole to make ourselves less vulnerable. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 10:54, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

… One another thing to note is that, say, in Russia, for a fair share (if not straight majority) of higher education students, the tuition is funded by the state, – based on one’s own academic performance. Thus, it’s not as simple as “I participate on Wikibooks so to get a course credit”, – it actually has a “and so that the state will provide funding for the next year of my education” part all along. And that gets quite close to the “money or services” – as clarified in the FAQ.

Now, there’s one more side to the problem. I have to admit that with the free licenses being embraced by the corporations, – and with something like every other enterprise out there having a wiki for the staff and clients to share the recipes on how to use the respective goods and services, – my idea was, why duplicate the effort? Is it all that reasonable to describe how to do something using product X when we can actually have free instructions on all the similar products (X, Y, Z, and beyond) collected at one single place, which is Wikibooks? (And the money currently spent on the maintenance of the company’s own wiki may be donated to the Foundation, – or some other worthy cause, anyway.)

Fortunately, despite of some confusion over the amendment, it does not prohibit “paid-for” contributions. Neither even does inconvenience the contributors in this case, either, for I’d rather expect for the employees of a company interested in contributing their documentation to Wikibooks (and collaborating over it there), to identify themselves irrespective of the policy, – if only as a matter of showing “authority” (of a kind) over their contributions on the particular subject.

What bother me, however, (and in addition to the issue with students above) – are the freelancers.

Suppose, for instance, that I’m contacted over IRC to write a book on air showers, and publish it here on Wikibooks, and be paid in Bitcoin for that. Now, I duly note on my user page that I was compensated by jsmith (~jsmith@2001:db8::da:42; J. Smith) for my contributions to the Air showers for dummies book. The question is: how the Wikibooks community is going to use that information? Will the book be instantly deleted because of that, or will I be blocked, or something?

Generally, could someone please spell out the specific circumstances when the value of one’s contributions is to be decided based, in whole or in part, on the (claimed) employer, client, and affiliation of the contributor? Suppose that, say Special:Diff/2468642 is found to be “paid” for. Does that make it any better or worse, and if so, why? Are there any other specific edits here at Wikibooks for which the affiliation would matter somehow?

Thanks in advance.

— Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 21:22, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Category:Wikibooks media

The French Wikibooks is requiring Image:Importing Image.jpg, and I was wondering why it hadn't been moved on Commons.

For information I did recently such a bot migration with MW:Manual:Pywikibot/imagecopy.py for the French Wikibooks and Wikiversity so there wouldn't be any technical difficulty. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 21:07, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Idem for Image:Stages_of_how_a_photocopier_works.png, their licenses allow to avoid a duplication. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 20:34, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

We have about 5,000 images that are suitable for import to Commons; and no willing volunteers to do it! QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 12:51, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

So I will begin in the next days, after my bot flag on Commons. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 20:06, 11 August 2014 (UTC)