Wikipedia:Buy one, get one free

The legend of the young editor heroically plugging the dike during a rising tide of COI articles which would otherwise flood Wikipedia. The unintended consequence is increasing the buildup. Who will relieve them from the pressure building up even faster?

No one in the community wants Wikipedia to be, sort of, abandoned to the shills. So we've got a lot of work to do.

— Jimbo Wales, "BBC Newsnight, October 6, 2015"

When a paid editor creates an article, should a volunteer fix it? If they do, the customer is rewarded with a buy one, get one free (BOGOF) editor offer. That is a service equivalent of the product sales promotion buy one, get one free (BOGOF). In the product sales promotion, the customer is rewarded with one identical free product. On Wikipedia, several good-faith editors are likely to help editing, normally at a higher standard than the paid editor. It's likely to be buy one (bad editor), get one (good team) free. Volunteers are subsidising the market. This increased supply drives down demand for quality paid editors, increasing demand for unscrupulous, low quality and poorly paid editors, at the cost of diverting the finite supply of quality volunteer editors, all based on market demand.

Paid and more generally COI editors are a systemic bias. Cleaning up after them externalises the cost, allows the articles to remain and does nothing to address the systemic bias. In fact, due to the finite volunteer resource, it not only increases coverage on topics that have been edited for pay but also decreases coverage of other topics, multiplying the systemic bias. Time spent salvaging a paid promotion is time not spent writing something else voluntarily.

Opinions for dealing with promotional articles created by undisclosed paid editors can polarise into two views being expressed in deletion discussions. They may be seen in terms of competing freedoms:

View	Action	Editor	Cost	Reader	Systemic bias	Cycle	Consequence
Subsidise bias	Rescue	Freedom to improve any article	Externality	Freedom to read article	Multiplied	Vicious circle	Tragedy of the commons
Internalise bias	WP:TNT, WP:Drafts, WP:Userify, WP:AFC	Freedom from having to	Internality	Freedom from systemic bias	Decreased	Virtuous circle	Internalizing the externality

Hardin stated in his analysis of the tragedy of the commons that:

Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

— Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons", Hardin (1968)

Internalizing the externality is one possible solution.

Subsidise bias

See also: Wikipedia:Deletion is not cleanup, WP:SURMOUNTABLE, and Wikipedia:Baby and bathwater

Let's keep the cute baby...even if we drain the bathwater.

Deleting these articles doesn't lessen their incoming flow. Persistent COI editors are unlikely to get discouraged by deletion. Editors can make the best of the situation by supporting deletion of non-notable topics and exercise their freedom to improve notable topics. Can't beat them, fix them.

There are far too many COI editors writing promotional articles such that it is unlikely that deleting promotional articles will stem the flow of promotional articles being written. Editors choose to rescue promotional articles on notable topics because they think they ought to be covered in the encyclopedia.

• Rewritten articles are free from COI, and promotion:
  • Buy one, get one-free (BOGOF) editor doesn't matter, it's only the content that matters (it doesn't matter if it was originally an advert, POV, promo, COI etc.) per Wikipedia:Edits, not editors.
• Deletion doesn't deter
• Deletion is POINT
  • It is disruptive to improving content as deletion is not cleanup (and WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP). If the topic is notable, and if no one likes the content or tone of the article, fix it, stub it, use reliable sources and let it be
• Deletion hinders transparency
  • When articles are deleted, those contributions from suspected COI or sock editors are only accessible to admins and not editors. Deletion works against transparency, and hinders/prevents non-admin editors from having the information to disclosure and hence contributions
• Improve
  • BURDEN supports "editors may object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references; consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step." Particularly as it parallels the similar items in BEFORE (especially points C.1, C.3, and C.4) and SURMOUNTABLE
• It goes against the grain of WP:AGF to assume an editor has other intent, and in any case, it's the edits not the editors that matter.
• Freedom to improve any article
  • Who chooses to exclude an article on a notable topic? An editor can decide whether articles should be kept by following Notability, GNG and is not excluded under What Wikipedia is not, so it should be kept.
• If notable, WP:NOTTEMPORARY applies (and WP:RECENTISM, in particular WP:10YT applies to content within an article rather than its notability).

Internalise bias

See also: WP:ATD-I, WP:NORESCUE, and Drain the swamp

WP:TNT made this safe.

Considering WP:NOTSPAM, rewriting the spammers' biographies for them hours after they are nominated for deletion is counterproductive. The BURDEN should be on the creator. Volunteer editors should have to mop up at little as possible, and not be put in a position to labour over long-winded deletion or invest time fixing when an article is promotion or anything is undisclosed.

Nominating promotional articles not primarily on the basis of notability, but of verified promotionalism. We can delete for any good reason, and at this time it's promotionalism which is the hazard, and there's only one way to discourage it. Our volunteers fixing the articles for the paid editors is counterproductive.

Purely promotional and obviously a case of someone 'mistakenly' believing that Wikipedia is another LinkedIn, not understanding the difference between an encyclopedia and a professional network service or a yellow pages. Wikipedia cannot be allowed to be used for profit in this way at the abuse of the voluntary unpaid time that dedicated users spend building this encyclopedia which in spite of some biographies and articles about some companies, was never intended to be an additional business networking platform. Whether the text itself sounds promotional or not, the article is an advert and a plethora of sources has never been an automatic assumption of notability.

Articles shouldn't be a way for paid actors to start a crummy PR fluff piece and have volunteers finish it in order to promote a company and/or its execs. It just takes time away from adding WP content.

DGG says it best, "Lack of notability is not the only reason for deletion. Borderline notability combined with clear promotionalism is an equally good reason."

Wikipedia:Notability, the guideline which the GNG is a part of, also requires for the presumption of inclusion that in addition to meeting the GNG a subject must not be excluded by the policy Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not.

• Standard COI applies, if notable, then leave the article for others to create, rather than diverting finite volunteer resources with:
• Freedom from having to fix/rewrite/subsidise the market
  • It would be better all-round if we were free from these promotional articles by TNT
  • BOGOF doesn't deter — it incentivises (and that's independent of the assumption that deletion doesn't deter)

• Fruit of the poisonous tree, considering the ToU
  • Wikipedia:Fruit of the poisonous tree and Tip of the iceberg: We can see onwiki activity more easily than offwiki. This has a parallel in content and sourcing issues, when an editor has not disclosed or has misrepresented their COIs and promotionalism, they may have also used their own created sources and misrepresented them as WP:RS.

• Deletion Wikipedia:Deletion policy#4 Advertising or other spam without any relevant or encyclopedic content (but not an article about an advertising-related subject)
  • Deletion deters: It is not always the case that most promotional editors never get discouraged. Most of them whose are working on a single article or related article never do come back, and its easy enough to block them if they do and create-protect the article. The ones who do come back are mainly the paid editing farms and the unpaid zealots and fans.
  • Repeated recreation may be WP:SALTed.

• NOTPOINTy - there's making a point, and there's disrupting to make a point:
  • In the short term this could be seen as POINTY (for borderline or notable topics)
  • Long-term we need to decide what's best as BOGOF could be seen as POINTY
• Is BOGOF editing an issue? Tired of having sleazy PR / SEO hacks make hay from your volunteer work?
• Editors may be discouraged by the effort to take on undisclosed paid editors, persistent COI editors, sockpuppets (and sockfarms), WP:PAYTALK and the bureaucracy of WP:COIN and WP:SPI.

Type

Promotional articles may be deleted for promotionalism WP:DEL4 / WP:DEL14, even if they are borderline notable. There may also be legal issues hanging over content edited by a contractor, for example the copyright of text given to them by their client may reside with the client not the editor, needing WP:ORTS which won't have happened when undisclosed. That's WP:DEL2. After those considerations, if clearly notable, editors have the option to choose to rescue, or recreate later:

Type	Not promotion	Promotion
Notable	Keep	Rewrite or N Delete WP:DEL4 / WP:DEL14
Borderline notable	Keep or N Delete WP:DEL8	N Delete WP:DEL4 / WP:DEL14
Non-notable	N Delete WP:DEL8	N Delete WP:DEL8 / WP:DEL4 / WP:DEL14

Scale

Articles should be dealt with one at a time.

• In 2013, 250 user accounts were blocked or banned in the Wiki-PR case. Wiki-PR claimed 12,000 clients.
• In 2015, 381 sockpuppet accounts were found in the Orangemoody case, and almost all of those working on it felt that mass deletion was appropriate, where there was real reason for making an impact. For instance, where articles were sometimes copyright violations where it was a requirement that they be deleted.

Paid workers and volunteers

Industrial wastewater treatment – an unusual volunteering opportunity. The WP:BURDEN should be on the polluter.

Volunteers cleaning up after an industrial accident. That works as an exception, rather than the rule.

Main page: WP:VOLUNTEER

There are challenges when teams comprise paid workers and volunteers. Volunteering should be enjoyable, it's voluntary. There may be competing freedoms. Volunteers predominantly work on their own terms. There may be a wide range of views about paid editing. Paid workers may have deadlines, outcomes and payment dates.

Market forces

There are competing forces here. We want good content, we want less mopping. A problem with BOGOF editing is it increases the number of editors to work on that topic, and the quality/value of them. It increases supply. With the rules currently stated for editors, we have the inverse of how voluntary organisations run: Volunteers with responsibilities, and staff (undisclosed paid editors) with none. Rewriting bad paid content with good volunteer content is the equivalent of hiring a BOGOF editor. We're subsidising the market. This is not sustainable. Dare to say it, WP:IAR.

Setup editors for success

The underlying problem is we currently set up paid editors and clients for short-term success:

• anyone can edit under-the-radar
• Our policies are smallprint
• There isn't a simple, obvious, way for paid editors to contribute
• There isn't consensus for experienced volunteers to support less experienced paid editors.

In that partial vacuum, undisclosed under-the-radar editing may result in long-term failure (of reputation for the customer and editor - see Streisand effect). BOGOF provides an alternative that they can hire anyone and get a BOGOF good article. We shouldn't ask volunteers to subsidise the market. Can we delete promo articles before the editor gets paid, or raise the bar somehow? e.g. Circle AfD.

Consensus

If the subject is worthy we should include it. Borderline cases, COI, TOOSOON and DEADLINE apply. It could be argued that there's competing disruptive forces here, but let's be clear and agree on one thing: WP is not a promo platform and there's no place for undisclosed COI / undisclosed paid editing. That's the disruption. Mopping up after isn't, whichever form that may take.

• WP:BLOCKDETERRENT is clear ...
  2. deter the continuation of present, disruptive behavior;
  3. and encourage a more productive, congenial editing style within community norms.

See also

• Free-rider problem
• Moral hazard
• Brood parasite rejection – where hosts reject offspring, for example cuckoo eggs
• Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Scam warning
• User:Doc James/Paid editing
• User:Bri/What's wrong with undisclosed paid editing
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-04-08/Op-ed "We are drowning in promotional artspam"
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-10-07/Op-ed "Walled gardens of corruption"
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-07-04/Op-ed "Two policies in conflict?"

External links

• Wikipedia's struggle to save its soul (subscription required)