Journal of Current Cultural Research
editors are willing to find ways to mange it based on existing ideals of neutrality
and openness.
While debates continue to play out in the English language Wikipedia about
paid editing, in other language versions, working arrangements have been reached
with those editors who are paid to write for the encyclopaedia. In the German language encyclopaedia (which is the third largest version behind English and Dutch)
companies can edit through a verified account (Wikipedia 2014a). Similarly advocates for paid editing from Wikimedia France welcome the input of corporate
editors as they see it as improving articles that would otherwise languish and to
keep information relevant and up-to-date (Wikimania 2013).
In line with this more open approach from other Wikipedias, the English language Wikipedia community is responding to the increasing presence of commercial interests and paid editors by favouring the ideals of openness and neutrality
over freedom from commercial involvement. It is looking at ways of defining and
regulating this involvement, but not in any way that would impede the ability of
anyone to edit.
For the popular discourses about peer production that hold Wikipedia up as an
ideal of free, open, volunteer-led, non-commercial activity, no longer hold in an
environment where companies will want a presence on one of the world’s most
popular websites. And while the Wikimedia Foundation and founder Jimmy
Wales are drawing bright lines around paid advocacy editing, the Wikipedia editorial community is taking steps to manage commercial involvement by looking at
the variations of paid editing as they ‘seek to strike a balance between stability
and open-ended flexibility’ (Coleman 2013: 208).
English language Wikipedia editors are still negotiating and constructing paid
editing. Indeed as the nature of the web is changing and commercial activity is
more overtly evident across other platforms, some editors seemed resigned to
commercial activity in the encyclopaedia (Song & Wildman 2013). The question
is then not how to prevent commercial involvement from paid editors (such as
through the policy proposals discussed), but how to manage it. In reconfiguring
their values from earlier editorial communities, editors are reflecting the changing
nature of the web and separating out the values of openness, freedom and noncommercialism into a workable model that upholds the central ideals of neutral
and objective information in an encyclopaedia that anyone can edit.
