Template talk:Uw-paid1

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Employment[edit]

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)[reply]

Edit request 7 June 2024[edit]

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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:

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

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)[reply]

@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)[reply]

@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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

@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)[reply]

@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)[reply]

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)[reply]

I suggest SilverLocust 💬 19:19, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]