Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy

Undeclared Paid Editor (UPE) product

Is a page being completely the product of an Undeclared Paid Editor (UPE) a standard reason for deletion? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:28, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

• Interesting. WP:PAID specifies what is required and what is prohibited but fails to provide a consequence for noncompliance. Technically it's a violation of the TOS but I just don't see the WMF bringing out the banhammer for every run-of-the-mill UPE. Would be helpful to document our general procedure for dealing with paid editing. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:45, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• It is if we say it is. Legacypac (talk) 00:49, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• Wikipedia_talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Proposal: Expand G5 to include undisclosed paid editing. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 03:05, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

User:Pppery, I am pointing participants from there to here, because the CSD expansion proposal so woefully fails the new CSD criterion criteria and has no chance of gaining consensus. It is absurd to to argue that a CSD should apply to something that is not even agreed to be a reason for deletion at AfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:10, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

I was apparently confused. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 03:12, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

As per King of Hearts, I have found this confusing. WP:PAID appears forceful, but completely lacks the "or what". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:26, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

• I'd rely on WP:NOTSPAM, which is part of the deletion policy via WP:DEL14 and/or WP:DEL4 depending on how bad it is. I generally do not like UPE blocks as UPE blocks (or heck, UPE deletions as UPE deletions), as that implies the act of declaration makes something that is usually inherently unfit for the encyclopedia somehow fit for the encyclopedia.
  That it violate the TOU is an aggravating factor that in my view means we should more stringently enforce NOTSPAM than we might if it wasn't written by a freelancer or firm without declaration, but in my view the question of the compliance with the TOU is secondary to compliance with local policy, which is stricter than the TOU: we require that Wikipedia not be used for advertising, and native advertising is a form of advertising. Even if someone declares that is what they are doing, it is not okay.
  Back to the original question: yeah, I think it is certainly an aggravating factor and I am opposed to it quite strongly, but we should instead focus on using the much more robust local policy on advertising to delete UPE rather than the WMF TOU. If we view most UPE as native advertising (as I do), we already have the policy in place to delete it. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:23, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks TonyBallioni. I think you are right, but when push comes to shove, all that implies that UPE is not, per se, a reason for deletion. Instead, you advise people to rely on WP:CSD#G11 to WP:DEL4 to WP:NOT (DEL14)? You mention Native advertising, which appears to only have mention in the essay Wikipedia:Deceptive advertising, and WP:COVERT, a section in the behavioral guideline WP:COI. Violation of the behavioral guidelines is reason for WP:BLOCKing, not for deletion. Should something somewhere encourage editors to take a more critical NOTPROMOTION-based evaluation when there is suspected UPE? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:38, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

How I generally view it is that DEL4 is G11, and spam that is not quite at that level can still be validly deleted via discussion because of DEL14 (and NOT seems to confirm that deciding how to deal with NOT violations is the role of XfD in WP:WHATISTOBEDONE (which as an aside is both a great and not really helpful shortcut at the same time.) My view is that an article or draft being UPE is certainly a factor that XfDs can take into consideration when determining if something meets DEL4 or DEL14. Intent is important here, not just content.

Re: native advertising: our policies on this sort of stuff remain in written form largely the same as they were 10 years ago, but the nature of marketing has changed since then. My view (and ping MER-C as I know he often deals with this) is that it is the principles in the policies we should be applying, and that all good policy is written in a way where the principles remain clear even if the circumstances change. I think existing principles are clear here: Wikipedia is an encylopedia and articles about a company or organization are not an extension of their website or other social media marketing efforts [...] Those promoting causes or events, or issuing public service announcements, even if noncommercial, should use a forum other than Wikipedia to do so.

Expecting today's PR hacks to operate like the PR hacks from 2005 is idiotic, and we shouldn't be counting decade old marketing techniques as the only kind of advertising that is advertising. Current best practice in the industry is not to write in traditional marketing speak and instead make it look like the material is neutral, informative, etc. No one writes sales pitches anymore: they instead tell stories because stories are how marketing studies show the human brain connects. Unfortunately an encyclopedia is also a great place to write a story, so we get targeted. It is my view policy as is still prohibits this, and that we should enforce it. Finding the exact wording and exact policy to clarify this would likely be difficult given how ingrained our policies here are, but I suppose it could be helpful, but I don't think it needs to be done for the argument to be valid in an XfD because the principles remain the same. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:51, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Again, I agree with all of that. But. I still don't know what we should generally do at MfD when an OK-ish looking draft is nominated as an obvious UPE product. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:24, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

While our view of "notability" for a company or person remains as inclusive as it is, we need these UPEs to continue expanding our scope. For as one of these people once aptly told me, "if we don't write about ourselves, who else is going to?" – why, only someone you pay to do it: Bhunacat10 (talk), 13:45, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

• YES. If we don’t make it this way, the problem will only get worse. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 14:02, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

@Pythoncoder:, I wholeheartedly agree that it should be, but from the standpoint of wikipedia policy, I am not so sure. Graywalls (talk) 00:00, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

• No - being the product of an undisclosed paid editor is not in and of itself a reason for deletion. There are already numerous justifications for deleting unacceptably promotional content or content contributed in violation of a ban, which tend to be the issues with UPE. We don't need this blanket rationale. What TonyBallioni said, essentially. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:07, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• I agree with Ivanvector. --Bsherr (talk) 20:50, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• Editing in defiance of our rules is not legitimate editing It's vandalism, an attempt to destroy WP. Paid editing without declaration is both a deliberate defiance of our terms of use, and almost always a deliberate defiance of our most fundamental policy, WP:NPOV.

If anyone here thinks NPOV is of little importance, we need a discussion elsewhere.

Assuming that I'm talking to people who do care about NPOV: the POV when one writes for money is very strong and very direct. In practice, over my 12 years here, I have seen almost no satisfactory articles from people who are writing an article for money. As one declared paid editor told me, they don't get paid if they do not do what is wanted (and that editor is about to leave the business, because of the lack of customers who actually want a neutral article.) The articles we have been able to detect from undeclared paid editors have almost never been satisfactory. Looking back over the articles about organizations that have been accepted in earlier years about 1/4 are basically paid propaganda or advertising. Do we want to continue this? DGG ( talk ) 00:50, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• No per Ivanvector. If an article is not NPOV then it should be (and can be) fixed or deleted for that reason, not just because of who wrote it. If an article is NPOV and meets other content criteria (sourceable, not a copyvio, etc) then there is no benefit to the encyclopaedia from deleting it. I very strongly suspect that we have lots of content from UPE that nobody is batting an eyelid about because it isn't promotional and is otherwise of sufficient quality that nobody has had cause to look into the author's motivations. Thryduulf (talk) 12:33, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • I very strongly disagree on this: advertising is defined by intent and context, not simply tone. I could write a perfectly NPOV history of a company. If I put it in the employee handbook, it’s just a history. If my employer pays to have it included as an article in the newspaper with the hope or raising awareness and driving sales, it’s an advertisement. Our policy prohibits advertising, not just advertising that is written using marketing techniques that are a decade outdated. TonyBallioni (talk) 12:45, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
    • When that content is an encyclopaedic history of a notable corporation then Wikipedia benefits from its inclusion and so would be harmed by its deletion. The only thing we should be caring about is what most benefits the encyclopaedia - if it also benefits the company that is irrelevant, indeed other people are invited to share, use and reuse our content for their own purposes, including for profit making purposes. It's not a zero-sum game. Thryduulf (talk) 13:37, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
      • No: it actively harms us by ruining the credibility we’ve spent two decades building. Every commercial edit declared or otherwise is harmful to Wikipedia, regardless of the actual words typed because it causes us to lose public trust. If it is in mainspace and the intent is to advertise, policy allows us to delete it, and in the overwhelming number of cases we should. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:42, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
        • I couldn't disagree more. If the words are encyclopaedic and the subject is notable and there are no copyright restrictions, then the intent of the author does not matter. Indeed the intent will be unknowable in almost all cases. The intent of many institutions who host Wikimedians in residence is to raise the profile of that institution and/or its collections. That does not make content produced by those Wikimedians any else encyclopaedic and it does not diminish the credibility of Wikipedia - indeed where our coverage of encyclopaedic topics is increased and/or improved then it increases our credibility. The same is true if the editor is editing for pay and has not declared it - if their content is good it improves the encyclopaedia, if their content is bad it harms it - in exactly the same way and to exactly the same degree as good content and bad content from unpaid editors does. If this were not true, why would declared and retroactively disclosed paid editors be treated differently by the terms of use? Why would this proposal be limited to undisclosed paid editors and not to all content produced by paid editors? Thryduulf (talk) 15:35, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
          • I figured you’d disagree. I don’t think there’s ever been a single content policy issue we’ve agreed on, so at least we’re consistent
            To your point: I hate deleting stuff as UPE: I don’t view the TOU as particularly useful as it is significantly weaker than existing en.wiki policy on advertising, and deletion as a TOU violation implies that the act of declaration somehow makes the content, which is very likely to be inappropriate for Wikipedia to begin with, acceptable for the encyclopedia. I’m opposed to undeclared commercial editing but I think the focus on the act of declaring is a distraction from the actual harm they are doing.
            To your larger point, I suspect we’re never going to agree on this. I think the view you’re expressing was probably correct in 2005 when we both needed a lot of new content to show we were relevant and before the marketing sector changed best practices as to how advertising is done. As I said above, it is the principles behind the policies that we are enforcing and the most important one is this: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It is not an advertising platform, and we have the ability under current policy to delete content that is advertising already, so focusing on the declaration part is a distraction in my view. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:58, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
            • Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, exactly. What matters is that our content is encyclopaedic (and Free) - if it isn't improve it or remove it without worrying about who wrote it as that's irrelevant. If someone wants to advertise by adding encyclopaedic content to Wikipedia then why should we care? They are not harming Wikipedia - indeed the opposite. If they also benefit, then good for them, perhaps it will encourage them to add more good content to the encyclopaedia - either way we still win. This isn't any different to how it was in 2005 - we still want new and improved encyclopaedic content. Thryduulf (talk) 16:25, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
              • Covert advertising and PR damages credibility and is by definition not encyclopedic. You cannot make it encyclopedic no matter how much copyediting.Praxidicae (talk) 16:31, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
                • You are conflating content and contributor. Just because something was written by a paid editor (paid or otherwise) does not mean that it is or is not encyclopaedic. Just because something is used in advertising does not mean that it is or is not encyclopaedic (most things used in advertising are not, but some things are). Thryduulf (talk) 16:48, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I'd agree with Thryduulf on this. Those taking the other position seem to be saying this: An article may be written that to experienced editors appears perfectly neutrally written, with copper-bottomed sourcing; but nevertheless, if written by the wrong people with the wrong motives, the text somehow exudes a promotional ... aura that will dispose naive readers favourably towards the company or product, and dispose more sophisticated readers against Wikipedia. I don't believe in this paranormal phenomenon: Bhunacat10 (talk), 14:26, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

• I find both User:DGG and User:Thryduulf compelling. They appear in contradiction, but maybe not so at all. DGG says that UPEs never create OK articles. Thryduulf says that OK articles must not be deleted for a mere author behavioural (declaration-failure) reason. Evidence? Can DGG point to UPE product that was not ok (probably requires a temp-undelete)? Can Thryduulf point to some UPE example products that are OK articles? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:09, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • If the articles are good quality nobody will have looked to see whether the creator was UPE or not. There is no point temporarily undeleting anything - there are loads of examples of UPE writing bad articles, nobody is disputing that, but as they are (correctly) deleted currently for being bad content there isn't a need for a new reason to delete bad content and there isn't a need of a new reason to delete good content either. Thryduulf (talk) 23:54, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: community general sanctions and deletions

I have created an RfC at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: community general sanctions and deletions that proposes amending Wikipedia:General sanctions#Community sanctions to say that deletions under community general sanctions that bypass deletion discussion must meet the requirements for speedy deletion and be reviewable at deletion review. Cunard (talk) 09:07, 28 April 2019 (UTC)