Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Paid contribution disclosure policy RfC 1

Summary: With the release of a paid contribution disclosure policy, as part of the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use, that replaced the previous guidelines, the English Wikipedia community is seeking feedback on how to update its conflict of interest guidelines. You are invited to make your preferences known below, and join in the discussion.

Paid contribution disclosure policy

On June 16, 2014, the Wikimedia Foundation revised its Terms of Use to include a paid contribution disclosure policy, which specifies conditions under which an editor must disclose information about a paid contribution, and ways to make that disclosure. In summary:

• If you make a "contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation", then you "must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation" with respect to the contribution in question.
• Disclosure can be made in "a statement on your user page", or, in accompaniment with your contribution, within your edit summary or in a statement on the talk page for the contribution.

This policy only covers disclosure of paid contributions; it does not address other matters that are covered by English Wikipedia's conflict of interest guidelines, such as whether or not an editor should be permitted to make paid contributions. The Terms of Use allows for individual Wikimedia projects to adopt an alternative paid contribution disclosure policy by consensus agreement.

The paid contribution disclosure policy in the Terms of Use is supplemented by WP:COI. As the TOU state; "Applicable law, or community and Foundation policies and guidelines, such as those addressing conflicts of interest, may further limit paid contributions or require more detailed disclosure."

These additional limits, as described in the conflict of interest guideline, include:

• You "should provide full disclosure of your connection, when using talkpages, making edit requests, and similar" if
  • you "you are receiving monetary or other benefits or considerations to edit Wikipedia as a representative of an organization (whether directly as an employee or contractor of that organization, or indirectly as an employee or contractor of a firm hired by that organization for public relations purposes), or", or
  • "you expect to derive monetary or other benefits or considerations from editing Wikipedia (for example, by being an owner, officer, or other stakeholder of an organization; or by having some other form of close financial relationship with a topic you wish to write about),"
• "Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question, or on a noticeboard such as WP:COIN. These changes may or may not be acted upon.".

Options under discussion

You are invited to specify which of the following options you prefer for a paid contribution disclosure policy:

Note: for purposes of discussion, there are multiple proposals for the list of options to present.

Options suggested by Isaacl (proposal 3)

• A. Follow the paid contribution disclosure policy from the Terms of Use.
• B. Adopt stronger requirements for disclosure that would either broaden the definition of paid contributions, or require more information to be disclosed.
• C. Do not require disclosure of paid contributions.

Questions

What happens if option A achieves consensus?

The conflict of interest guidelines will be updated so they are in full agreement with the paid contribution disclosure policy in the Terms of Use.

What happens if option B achieves consensus?

Further discussion will be initiated to develop a proposal for an alternative paid contribution disclosure policy. Once an agreement has been reached on the best proposal, a discussion will be held to allow comments on the specific proposed policy versus the one in the Terms of Use. Based on this discussion, a consensus will be determined on adopting the proposed alternative policy, or continuing with the policy in the Terms of Use.

What happens if option C achieves consensus?

The conflict of interest guidelines (WP:COI) will be updated to specify that the paid contribution disclosure policy in the Terms of Use has been superseded by this consensus to make disclosure optional. This alternative policy will be set forth within WP:COI, and the meta:Alternative paid contribution disclosure policies page will be updated to refer to this alternative policy. WP:COI will continue to provide advice to editors with a conflict of interest.

What about other issues, such as should paid contributions be disallowed?

Once a consensus has been determined on the disclosure policy, discussion can proceed to discuss other related matters, such as what restrictions may be placed upon paid contributions.

Options suggested by Mike Cline (proposal 2)

• A: The Wikipedia community should require paid editor disclosure in accordance with the language in the TOU and adopt guidelines and processes to implement those terms. (This would ratify the current TOU as community policy and pave the way to develop whatever additional guidelines or processes we might need to enforce this policy without creating more onerous disclosure methodology than that specified in the TOU.)
• B: The Wikipedia community should require paid editor disclosure in accordance with the language in the TOU, but adopt more stringent disclosure guidelines and processes above and beyond those specified in the TOU. (This would ratify the current TOU as community policy and pave the way to develop whatever additional guidelines or processes we might need to enforce this policy and allow the creation of different/more onerous disclosure methodology than that specified in the TOU.)
• C: The Wikipedia community should not require paid editor disclosure. (This is the consensus position adopted by the Commons community. The WP community may instead provide advice to all classes of paid editors on why disclosure is useful, but such advice would not be policy and should not be used in any way to force disclosure.)

Questions

What happens if option C achieves consensus? (Mike Cline version)

The conflict of interest guidelines will be updated to reflect that disclosure is not required and to reflect community advice on the best practices relative to paid editor contributions.

Brief summary statements

Please state your preferences below. You can optionally provide a short paragraph of explanation, but please place longer descriptions and any replies to others under the "Discussion" section.

Examples:

• B first choice; A second choice. isaacl (talk) 02:49, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
• support either A or B. isaacl (talk) 19:11, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

This proposal for starting an RfC is clearly malformed. What are you supposed to support or oppose?

It also fails in basic fairness. The consensus view as of the RfC on Meta is that paid editing should be disclosed. ~1300 people participated, 1,103 saying disclosure should be mandatory. These (this?) proposal(s) lets potentially a very small group repeal the current policy with a single RfC, but requires a strengthening of the disclosure rules to go through 2 RfCs and a long discussion on top of that. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:56, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

I've only glanced at this, but I agree. It's absurdly complicated, and the options don't include "disclosure recommended but not required" (or similar wording), per the current COI guideline. That's the key question, so why it is being omitted? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 04:05, 1 July 2014 (UTC)