Before being indefinitely blocked, FergusM1970 made more than 4600 edits on the English Wikipedia, spread over eight years. In the last two years, he was paid to edit several articles for clients that included the Venezuelan energy company Derwick Associates; Fergus maintains that this was his only step into paid advocacy, rather than paid editing, a distinction that the Signpost has drawn attention to previously. Fergus was banned in December 2014 amid allegations of advocating for pay on behalf of e-cigarettes. We spoke with him about his experiences.
The ed17: How long did you edit for pay on Wikimedia sites?
Ed: Is FergusM1970 your first account? If not, how have you evaded scrutiny by the English Wikipedia's checkuser tool?
Ed: Do you only operate on the English Wikipedia, and how many articles have you been compensated for editing?
Ed: To broach a potentially taboo topic area, how much do you charge clients for creating or maintaining articles?
Ed: Have you consistently disclosed when you were editing for pay?
Ed: If a client's preferred topic is not notable under Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, how do you proceed?
Ed: Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, has endorsed a so-called "bright line", which "is simply that if you are a paid advocate, you should disclose your conflict of interest and never edit article space directly. You are free to enter into a dialogue with the community on talk pages, and to suggest edits or even complete new articles or versions of articles by posting them in your user space." Is this a viable option for paid advocates?
Ed: In your opinion, how should the Wikimedia sites deal with paid editing and advocacy? Where should the proverbial line in the sand be drawn?
Before being indefinitely blocked, FergusM1970 made more than 4600 edits on the English Wikipedia, spread over eight years. In the last two years, he was paid to edit several articles for clients that included the Venezuelan energy company Derwick Associates; Fergus maintains that this was his only step into paid advocacy, rather than paid editing, a distinction that the Signpost has drawn attention to previously. Fergus was banned in December 2014 amid allegations of advocating for pay on behalf of e-cigarettes. We spoke with him about his experiences.
The ed17: How long did you edit for pay on Wikimedia sites?
Ed: Is FergusM1970 your first account? If not, how have you evaded scrutiny by the English Wikipedia's checkuser tool?
Ed: Do you only operate on the English Wikipedia, and how many articles have you been compensated for editing?
Ed: To broach a potentially taboo topic area, how much do you charge clients for creating or maintaining articles?
Ed: Have you consistently disclosed when you were editing for pay?
Ed: If a client's preferred topic is not notable under Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, how do you proceed?
Ed: Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, has endorsed a so-called "bright line", which "is simply that if you are a paid advocate, you should disclose your conflict of interest and never edit article space directly. You are free to enter into a dialogue with the community on talk pages, and to suggest edits or even complete new articles or versions of articles by posting them in your user space." Is this a viable option for paid advocates?
Ed: In your opinion, how should the Wikimedia sites deal with paid editing and advocacy? Where should the proverbial line in the sand be drawn?
Discuss this story
Fascinating! I wonder how many folks like Fergus are lurking around, just trying to supplement their income.-- Milowent • has spoken 21:22, 5 March 2015 (UTC) reply
I find it hugely distasteful that the Signpost gives a stage for paid shills to attack the editors who opposed their undisclosed advocacy. As a fully paid-up member of the WP:MED cabal (there is no cabal), I despair of the amount of time I have sometimes had to spend defending a basic Wikipedia principle like finding and using only the best quality sources. Many Wikimedians know me off-wiki and would confirm that the very thought that I could have a COI regarding the edits I make to medical articles is beyond laughable.
Of course the POV-pushers and SPAs want to exclude "their" articles from WP:MEDRS because it's so much easier to shove their insidious bias into articles if they can cherry-pick poor quality sources to bolster their views. The truth is that MEDRS is only what RS would be if every topic area had such a wealth of sources that medicine has. And anybody who believes that articles making health claims (like e-cigs) shouldn't be held to the same high standards as other medicine-related articles deserves an encyclopedia run by the POV-pushers and paid advocates. -- RexxS ( talk) 22:57, 5 March 2015 (UTC) reply