Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Reward board (2nd nomination)

Wikipedia:Reward board

Wikipedia:Reward board (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Bounty board (2nd nomination). This article-improvement tactic has also outlived its usefulness, and now seems to be misunderstood. Miniapolis 15:08, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

• Keep. I see no rationale for deletion. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:19, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

• Mark as closed down. In my opinion this is worse than the Bounty Board as it solicits to find editors to work for a fee rather than to earn a donation to the WMF. It doesn't make any sense for the community to ban Wiki-PR while at the same time appearing to encourage paid editing by having somewhere to post adverts. It has been used more than the Bounty Board, but is this really something that we want to encourage? Any benefit that we've gained from this over the last 5 years since the previous MFD is outweighed by the potential negatives. SmartSE (talk) 15:33, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
• Closed Down tag per Smartse - We're basically telling everyone Paid editing's forbidden yet we're telling them it's fine.... With the WikiPR business going on I assumed Paid editing was forbidden. "Schoolboy Error" Apologies! Davey2010T 15:42 17:45, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
• Procedural Keep I don't see any good reason why this should be deleted in the nomination, just OTHERSTUFF. KonveyorBelt 15:54, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
• Close Down - I was involved with getting a reward completed before but overall, I don't think this has any true benefits for the site. Makes it give out the idea that "Get an article/list to X, receive a shiny star on your talk page" is all one can do on the site. GamerPro64 16:31, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
• Keep. It's not against some kind of fundamental wiki-law. I don't care whether one editor pays another; what matters is whether the edits are good or bad. I'm slightly surprised by the suggestion that "Paid editing's forbidden"; if somebody could link to whatever policy says that, I'd be grateful. The COI guideline doesn't say it. bobrayner (talk) 16:48, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

+1 Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:38, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

See above. Davey2010T 17:51, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

There is a distinct difference between something being permissible and us encouraging it. SmartSE (talk) 18:58, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

If it's permissible, why delete? Just so WMF propaganda, which is flatly false, strictly speaking, can be thought of as true? That is good propaganda by the way. It's the best Wikimedia propaganda I've ever seen. And I was at Wikimania 2012 so I got to meet some of those folks too. So that's cool and it's an example of community money being well spent, in my opinion (if you're into propaganda). The shitty thing is that the WMF made it so hard to find. This is a knock-off version with only a fraction of the hits as the orginal. Even when it's a good thing, it's not "good good", you know what I mean? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:37, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid that made no sense whatsoever. SmartSE (talk) 19:29, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

• Keep. The nomination says that the Reward Board has "outlived its usefulness". Really? Are you sure? Those very nice starter articles were created just this month, thanks to the Reward Board. It's highly useful. -- I'm not that crazy (talk) 14:39, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
• Mark Historical For the same reasons as the bounty board. I see no reason to reject this good faith nomination on procedural grounds. That's being dense on purpose, when the reason for this nomination is clear from the context. Gigs (talk) 18:06, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Process is not determined by "context". KonveyorBelt 18:24, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

He's nominating it for the same reasons as the other MfD, he shouldn't have to spell it out all over again for the sake of process. I think there's plenty of fine reasons that someone might want to keep this page alive. Surely one could articulate one of those instead of a procedural objection. Gigs (talk) 19:21, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

• Close and mark as historical or closed or whatever's appropriate. Here's why. First of all, if you've been paying attention, there's been a slow-burning civil war on the Wikipedia over the question of how, exactly, to handle the commodification of Wikipedia articles, and the larger issue of where an entity like the Wikipedia fits into our market-based economic system and so on, and this board fits into that larger picture as I'll explain below. This is pretty much a political issue, partly because our rules are really designed for a more or less collegial/volunteer paradigm and not to handle a commodified Wikipedia and attacks from outside for-profit enterprises and so on. So pointing to specific rules is probably going to be less helpful than usual. Instead, let's think of it more like a business case and think about the cost/benefit ratio:

• The benefit of the board is pretty small:
  • The gross amount of material generated is pretty small. The board is just not all that active.
  • But the net activity is probably much smaller -- quite possibly negligible -- because, absent the presence of this board, most editors will probably be like "I'll just edit something else" rather than "I'll just play golf today". (If there was much net gain -- editors were forgoing golf or whatever because they need the fifty bucks -- the question of "to what extent does the Wikipedia want to be a sweatshop" would them arise.)
  • And it's questionable whether the material created is really better than other material that might be created by other incentives, such as "I'm interested and/or knowledgeable in topic X" or "I see a need for expanding our coverage of topic X" or "I'll look at the backlog pages" and so on.
• The cost of the board is much more than the small benefit:
  • The existence of the board is not helpful for us in figuring out the larger (and very important!) question of how to handle paid advocacy editing generally, because in discussions of the matter, the existence of this board then raises the question "Well, but what about the Reward Board?" For some people it's a source of genuine confusion, for others a useful red herring to obfuscate the issue or score a point; in both cases an unhelpful distraction from the heart of the matter.
  • Aside from that, there are other costs. It's not useful to when reporters writing articles can point to the existence of this board. (If it was a key part of the Wikipedia it would be useful, because then it'd be an accurate example of where we are coming from; but it's not, and it's not.) According to one commenter above, the existence of this board renders false some of the WMF's outreach material; if that's true, that's not a good thing. And just the general sketchy vibe given out by the board is potentially confusing to new editors and, at this point is our history, just overall not helpful to the Wikipedia project.
  • Again, all this wouldn't matter that much if the benefit was more than miniscule. But it is miniscule.

Of course, the ability to raise the existence of the board to raised as an obfuscating side issue and so forth is a positive benefit to several editors. So we're going to have some "keep" votes, for that as well other reasons. At the end of the day it's a political question, really. It's up to the person closing this discussion to consider strength of argument and the overall best interests of the Wikipedia, I guess. Herostratus (talk) 21:06, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

• Close it down. It appears to legitimize even personal cash payments for specific article writing tasks. The strongest defense is that it is barely used. It would be better if there were documented policy explicitly banning this sort of thing, as we shouldn't be using MfD to make these pseudo-policy decisions, but I sense that organised paid editing is strongly disapproved of by the majority of the community. --SmokeyJoe (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:20, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

• Close it down. Prone to gaming the WP:COI. Staszek Lem (talk) 04:20, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
• Close down per my argument in the MFD on the bounty board. Resolute 13:38, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
• Keep The Reward Board doesn't even always encourage editing per se. I've awarded barnstars based on backlog maintenance there. It's clear that some editors are on a crusade against paid editing that will be unsuccessful in banning the practice altogether. This piecemeal approach shouldn't be allowed to run around the clear consensus that has been expressed at much better-attended RfCs. If an individual editor is using the board in a way that flouts our policies and guidelines, take him or her to ANI or something. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, especially when it's not clear that there's much bathwater to begin with. --BDD (talk) 18:04, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Amen, BDD. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:13, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
• This is just not a good idea in the spirit of the wiki. Close it down, replace by an explanation why this has been shown not to work, and lock if necessary. >Radiant< 01:06, 1 November 2013 (UTC)