User:Tango/Consultancy

Introduction

I recently posted an email to wikimediauk-l outlining an idea for a social enterprise providing paid consultancy for subjects of Wikipedia articles wanting to improve them. Sending that email was a mistake, because it didn't go into all the details of how the consultancy would work in order to avoid the serious problems with conflicts of interest that are inherent in such work. The knee-jerk reactions were entirely predictable. This page is so I can explain in a little more detail what I was talking about and why I think it's a good idea. Please note, this is still only in the very early stages. I'm not actually proposing that it be implemented, I'm just putting it out there for discussion. Please also note that this is a the work of one person and should not be interpreted as having anything to do with any plans Wikimedia UK may or may not have.

What is the problem?

I don't believe it is disputed that there are a lot of subjects of Wikimedia articles (individuals, companies, organisations, etc.) that are not happy with the articles about or related to them. The official position is that these people should either post on talk pages or email OTRS. Any help that is provided is basically just telling people how to go about getting the problems fixed, rather than actually fixing them. Anyone wanting something fixed is expected to learn all about the relevant policies and procedures in order to convince the community to fix it. Most of these people almost certainly don't want to learn the minutiae of Wikipedia policy and just want someone to fix the problem.

This has resulted in various individuals and companies setting up services to help fix these problems in exchange for money. While some of them make a big deal about complying with Wikipedia policies, they generally do not handle the obvious conflicts of interest in a way that is consistent with Wikipedia's values and ideals (the actual policies on the subject are still a little vague). Most of them make promises that can't possibly be kept without doing things the Wikipedia community will serious object to.

Why is this the solution?

Attempts so far to deal with this problem have just involved trying to stop these services by outing them and blocking them. That is never really going to work, though. As long as there is a market for such a service, people will try to provide it. The only way to stop them is to compete with them. This could be done by trying to improve the volunteer services we provide, but I don't believe this will work for two reasons:

1) I don't think we'll find enough volunteers willing to put in the time to help commercial entities in that way. It's not very interesting work, and volunteering to help someone else make more money (which is why the commercial entities want their articles improved) isn't particularly rewarding.

2) A lot of people, particularly from big businesses, actually like paying for things. They would much rather have a paid service than a voluntary one. There is a feeling that if something is being given away, then it is probably worthless. Paying someone also allows you to be more demanding and gives you someone to blame if things go wrong. This means that even if we had a brilliant volunteer service to help these people, a lot of them would still go to the paid services we're trying to stop anyway.