If people want to have a community push to edit Wikipedia (and not just a few EAs individually choosing to do so), I think it’d be helpful to learn from past failures so we don’t accidentally burn more goodwill. It might be as simple as “never pay people to edit Wikipedia,” but I’m not sure (and lean against) that’s the only generalizable lesson.
I strongly agree that we should learn our lessons from this incident and seriously try to avoid any repetition of something similar. In my view, the key lessons are something like:
It’s probably best to avoid paid Wikipedia editing
It’s crucial to respect the Wikipedia community’s rules and norms (I’ve really tried to emphasize this heavily in this post)
It’s best to really approach Wikipedia editing with a mindset of “let’s look for actual gaps in quality and coverage of important articles” and avoid anything that looks like promotional editing
I think it would be a big mistake for one’s takeaway from this episode to be something like “the EA community should not engage with Wikipedia”.
Two more general lessons that I would add, which have nothing to do with the Vipul incident:
Avoid controversial and highly political topics (editing any such topics makes you much more likely to have your edits reverted, get into “edit wars”, and have bad experiences)
Avoid being drawn into “edit wars”. If another editor is hostile to your edits on a specific page, it’s often better to simply move on than to engage.
I’m actually working on a similar project www.oka.wiki, focused on funding Wikipedia translators (which we train on using Wikipedia, and hire in countries with low cost of living). We currently have ~10 FTE and already published hundreds of articles.
We initially got some pushback from the community, but so far it seems like the solutions we have implemented (around increasing transparency, more thorough quality checks) have helped.
I’d be happy to share more about the project and our experience if that’s helpful. I was planning to write a post in a couple of months about it once I have gathered more data/experience with this.
For third-party coverage of the incident, check out https://web.archive.org/web/20170625001549/http://en.kingswiki.com/wiki/Vipulgate -- I’m linking to Wayback Machine since that wiki seems to no longer exist; also a warning that the site’s general viewpoints are redpill, which might be a dealbreaker for some readers. But this particular article seems reasonably well-done in terms of its reporting/coverage, and isn’t too redpill.
Vipul Naik used to experiment with paying people to edit wikipedia pages. This has since run foul of Wikipedia community’s arbitration, for complicated online social reasons that I was unable to find a good history of.
If people want to have a community push to edit Wikipedia (and not just a few EAs individually choosing to do so), I think it’d be helpful to learn from past failures so we don’t accidentally burn more goodwill. It might be as simple as “never pay people to edit Wikipedia,” but I’m not sure (and lean against) that’s the only generalizable lesson.
I strongly agree that we should learn our lessons from this incident and seriously try to avoid any repetition of something similar. In my view, the key lessons are something like:
It’s probably best to avoid paid Wikipedia editing
It’s crucial to respect the Wikipedia community’s rules and norms (I’ve really tried to emphasize this heavily in this post)
It’s best to really approach Wikipedia editing with a mindset of “let’s look for actual gaps in quality and coverage of important articles” and avoid anything that looks like promotional editing
I think it would be a big mistake for one’s takeaway from this episode to be something like “the EA community should not engage with Wikipedia”.
Two more general lessons that I would add, which have nothing to do with the Vipul incident:
Avoid controversial and highly political topics (editing any such topics makes you much more likely to have your edits reverted, get into “edit wars”, and have bad experiences)
Avoid being drawn into “edit wars”. If another editor is hostile to your edits on a specific page, it’s often better to simply move on than to engage.
I’m actually working on a similar project www.oka.wiki, focused on funding Wikipedia translators (which we train on using Wikipedia, and hire in countries with low cost of living). We currently have ~10 FTE and already published hundreds of articles.
We initially got some pushback from the community, but so far it seems like the solutions we have implemented (around increasing transparency, more thorough quality checks) have helped.
I’d be happy to share more about the project and our experience if that’s helpful. I was planning to write a post in a couple of months about it once I have gathered more data/experience with this.
I strongly endorse each of these points.
Hi Linch! I have a loose summary of my sponsored Wikipedia editing efforts at https://vipulnaik.com/sponsored-wikipedia-editing/ that I have just updated to include more information and links.
For third-party coverage of the incident, check out https://web.archive.org/web/20170625001549/http://en.kingswiki.com/wiki/Vipulgate -- I’m linking to Wayback Machine since that wiki seems to no longer exist; also a warning that the site’s general viewpoints are redpill, which might be a dealbreaker for some readers. But this particular article seems reasonably well-done in terms of its reporting/coverage, and isn’t too redpill.