Wikinews:Water cooler/policy/archives/2014/September

Terms of use

 * Solidly supported. --Pi zero (talk) 23:35, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

I propose we adopt the following replacement for the new Paid contributions without disclosure section of the Terms of Use, as the section allows local projects to replace it.
 * Disclosure of paid contributions on English Wikinews is not a Terms of Use concern; it is a local policy concern.

My intent is to keep this issue under local control, rather than a legal issue that someone might try to take out of our hands (bearing in mind various unscrupulous actions taken pretty regularly by anti-Wikinews agitators). I've worded it to make clear we aren't sanctioning paid editing, in contrast to the replacement wording adopted by Commons: "The Wikimedia Commons community does not require any disclosure of paid contributions from its contributors."

The ostensible purpose of the addition, as I understand it, is to provide a new tool for cracking down on paid editing, by making it a legal issue. However, a strict interpretation of it would allow legal sanction, outside our control, for things some of which we would consider perfectly innocent, and others of which we are quite capable of addressing ourselves (indeed, we're much more able, than is Wikipedia, to take measures when necessary, both sanctioning individuals and issuing corrections on articles). --Pi zero (talk) 19:35, 7 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Ah control. Where would we be without it? Not here if the agitators had it. Any COI issue, of which paid contributions are part, are all currently handled perfectly well locally. So --RockerballAustralia contribs 22:40, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Makes sense. --Gryllida 06:53, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree with what everyone's said so far. --Patrick M (TUFKAAP) (talk) 13:57, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Commons has rather different concerns than Wikipedia or Wikinews. I admire the simplicity of their policy. It is based on WMF's requirement that A Wikimedia Project community may adopt an alternative paid contribution disclosure policy which has to be listed at Alternative paid contribution disclosure policies. I doubt that this qualifies. I think you need to draw one up. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:45, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
 * That's possible; we'll see. A reasonable person would say the whole thing was inapplicable to us because, prior to the foundation's ill-conceived tinkering, we already had policy in place that impinges on paid contribution; but we're not talking about reasonable people, we're talking about lawyers.  Commons had the advantage of, afaics, genuinely not caring about paid contributions.  We have a more difficult task, in that we have pre-existing policy that wasn't broken before, and we're trying to undo the damage the foundation has done without creating a legal statement that could be construed to interfere with our other policies.  If it proves necessary later, we'll come back to the community to endorse a more explicit phrasing approved by legal (the essence of which would be what we're already agreeing to here).  --Pi zero (talk) 23:19, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Removing any legal problems that the WMF policy might cause is certainly something we should change. Our policy on-wiki should remain the way we handle paid contributions. — Mike moral  ♪♫  08:00, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thought: Is the proposed wording being added to a particular policy page (WN:COI for example) or are we just going to link to this discussion if it comes up? --RockerballAustralia contribs 08:28, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
 * It's part of the WMF's terms of use on the Foundation wiki. Wikinews's change to it will be listed on Meta at Alternative paid contribution disclosure policies. We probably should note this at WN:COI though. — Mike moral  ♪♫  05:01, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Yep, specifically under 'Declaring an interest'. --Bddpaux (talk) 21:33, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I've stated in the sitenotice this discussion would run to the end of August. --Pi zero (talk) 11:24, 18 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Ehhhh, whut? I think the wording should be: "Disclosure of paid contributions on English Wikinews is not a Terms of Use concern; it is one covered under our local conflict of interest policy.". But, yes, I fully a localised wording.
 * It'd be nice to see WMF Legal give us a hand with the wording of local policies; I'm glad, and mildly amused, to see Commons avoiding The Other Place's paranoia about being slightly non-PC, and doing so for completely different reasons from those leading to Wikinews needing its own, subtly different, protections. For one, I don't want to see the asshattery that put me right-off contributing allowed. No, I don't mean Pi zero's edit, but the baying for blood in The Other Place &mdash; on no-less than Jimmy Wales' Talk Page.
 * On an unrelated note, I do hope people like the Purty pictures, I'll be looking for someone who fancies picking a few articles/reviews to help put some text around that. I've seen headlines in the Evening News about this being the most-successful Fringe ever. They mention The Stand, which is on Queen Street; I was just opposite The Doctors, with a purple piece of furniture, and asked where it was. I said "Queen Street", they said "So down that way?", and I smiled as I said "oh, aye."
 * They never asked how far. :P --Brian McNeil / talk 03:20, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I did consider wording it to specifically refer to COI, and hesitated over whether that, in something supposed to replace the section of the ToU, could be construed to mean that no other policy besides COI could apply to paid contribution (such as, NPOV). I also thought about asking for community feedback on the wording before actually proposing the thing, but shied away from doing so because I've seen these things get bogged down in discussions of what to do and not get to actually doing something.  --Pi zero (talk) 11:29, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

This gives me a gastric bleed.........
Credentials Please read this carefully. --Bddpaux (talk) 20:36, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * []; []. --20:57, 3 September 2014 (UTC)