The New York Times reports on claims of paid editing of Wikipedia by employees of the public relations firm Sunshine Sachs. Sunshine Sachs has represented a number of celebrity clients, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, Barbra Streisand, Guy Fieri, The Jonas Brothers, and Trisha Yearwood. In 2012, Business Insider listed its CEOs, Shawn Sachs and Ken Sunshine as among the "most powerful publicists in Hollywood".

Paid editing without disclosing a conflict of interest is a violation of the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use. Last year, after much community input and debate, the Terms of Use were strengthened in regards to undisclosed paid editing.

The alleged paid editing by Sunshine Sachs was exposed by Pete Forsyth (Peteforsyth), a Wikipedia editor and paid consultant who runs Wiki Strategies, which "provides consulting services for organizations engaging with Wikipedia and other collaborative communities". (The Signpost interviewed Forsyth in 2012 on the subject of paid editing.) Prompted by a Sunshine Sachs email Forsyth received which read "Sunshine Sachs has a number of experienced editors on staff that have established profiles on Wikipedia. The changes we make to existing pages are rarely challenged," Forsyth paid journalist Jack Craver to investigate and write a story called "PR firm covertly edits the Wikipedia entries of its celebrity clients" for the Wiki Strategies blog. The story focused primarily on edits to the article for Naomi Campbell, a Sunshine Sachs client, by one editor identified as a Sunshine Sachs employee. The editor removed a number of references to the extremely poor critical reception of her 1994 album babywoman and other potentially unflattering information.

Ken Sunshine acknowledged to the New York Times that Sunshine Sachs employees had violated Wikipedia's terms of use, but said that all of their staff have now disclosed their conflict of interest. It is not known how many Sunshine Sachs employees have edited Wikipedia, but the user pages of the three accounts mentioned in Craver's story now all have disclosure notifications. The Signpost also found one other account with such a disclosure notice.

The story attracted further coverage in a number of news outlets around the world, including the Daily Mail, India Today and stuff.co.nz.

Last year, a number of prominent public relations agencies committed to "ethical engagement practices" when editing Wikipedia (see Signpost coverage). Despite this, a number of companies still do not disclose their COI editing. For example, a April Signpost report revealed undisclosed advocacy editing by Sony. (June 23) G

• The threat to Freedom of Panorama, highlighted in the Signpost last week, was the subject of a leading article in The Times on June 24. Under the title "Freedom to Photograph" (subscription) the Times thundered:

"Next time you take a photo of the London Eye, or the Angel of the North, or any monument, artwork or building in a public place, know this: you are exercising a freedom that is under threat".

Two days later, on June 26, the newspaper also featured two follow-up letters at the top of its letters page, one signed by Jimmy Wales together with the British Photographic Council, the British Press Photographers' Association, the British Institute of Professional Photographers, Amateur Photographer, the Bureau of Freelance Photographers, the Chartered Institute of Journalists, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and the Open Rights Group; the second by Michael Maggs, chairman of Wikimedia UK.

The Times's news reporting on the subject (subscription) was followed up by the online editions of The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail. (A tracking page on Commons has more UK political and media echo.) The coverage notably included opposition to the change from a spokesperson for the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA),

"We are concerned that the well-intentioned proposals to ensure that architects are paid for the use of images of their work by commercial publishers and broadcasters would instead have negative implications, and represent a potentially damaging restriction of the debate about architecture and public space."

As of June 26 a petition to "Save the Freedom of Photography" launched by photographer Nico Trinkhaus on the website change.org had reached over 25,000 signatures in its first three days.

German Wikipedia is now running black banners above its articles to warn of the threat, and a discussion is open at Wikipedia talk:Freedom of Panorama 2015 as to whether the English Wikipedia should do similarly. The hashtag #saveFoP on twitter has also seen extensive traffic. Jheald

• Visualizing Wikipedia editing: A bar graph of the 30 most edited Wikipedia articles as of March 2015 was created by Ramiro Gómez, based on data from Wikipedia:Database reports/Pages with the most revisions. He posted the graph to the Reddit forum DataIsBeautiful. The Independent noted that "The list has little coherence or order. Some at the top are among the most important things in the world...but others are much more insignificant." It concluded that "the list perhaps says more about the people who are using the site than anything to do with the people being written about." Vox wrote that "In some cases, it's about the level of controversy and the scrutiny a certain topic might receive...Other times, however, it can be based on a topic being extremely dynamic or inspiring a lot of passion." Gómez himself attributed some of the traffic to vandalism, writing "Controversial figures certainly attract people who desparately [sic] try to be funny". (June 24-25) G
• Jimmy Wales asked to return UAE money: The Middle East Monitor sharply criticized Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales for having accepted $500,000 from the UAE government last December, a decision controversially discussed at the time, given the UAE's dismal human rights record (see previous Signpost coverage). The renewed criticism was sparked by a Twitter and email exchange between Wales and Alastair Sloan, the article's author. (June 24) A.K.
• Apparently they all have manifestos: A white supremacist manifesto has been discovered on a website belonging to Dylann Roof, who has been charged with nine murders in the June 17 Charleston church shooting. The manifesto, presumably written by Roof, details the racist opinions of its author and how he came to them, beginning with learning about the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The author writes, "The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words 'black on White crime' into Google, and I have never been the same since that day." (June 20) G

• New offices for Wikimedia Armenia: ArmeniaNow reports on the opening of the new offices of Wikimedia Armenia on Friday, June 19. The new offices are in the Press Building in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. Serzh Sargsyan, the President of Armenia, toured the offices and participated in discussions about Wikimedia projects in Armenia. Also on hand were Jan-Bart de Vreede, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Asaf Bartof, Head of WMF Grants and Global South Partnerships, Anna Koval, Manager of the Wikipedia Education Program, and Liam Wyatt, GLAM-Wiki Coordinator for Europeana. Wikimedia Armenia was founded in 2013. Last year, their "One Armenian, One Entry" program spurred Armenians to add thousands of articles to the Armenian Wikipedia. It is currently the 40th largest Wikipedia, with over 170,000 articles. De Vreede told ArmeniaNow that Wikimedia had much to learn from Wikimedia Armenia's efforts. (June 19) G

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• On your story regarding new Wikipedia offices in Armenia, you mention "[Armenian Wikipedia] is currently the 40th largest Wikipedia, with over 170,000 articles. Yet its listing is glaringly absent from our lead page that lists language Wikipedias that have even 50,000 article, but yet fails to mention the Armenian Wikipedia with its 170k plus articles. werldwayd (talk) 22:50, 25 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• I wonder if that has to do with AW's recent acceleration of article creation. I think they've jumped quite a bit in the rankings just in the last two years. Gamaliel (talk) 03:34, 26 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• "[T]he community of Wikipedia is completely against censorship." Not at all. --Fauzan^{✆ talk}_{✉ mail} 01:18, 26 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would be a lot happier without the F-word and other profanity in some articles. I don't think even if someone used the F-word when talking about Taylor Swift that the quote should be in her article. After all, she's G-rated when she performs or at least her fans are in the age group that expect that.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:18, 26 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • There's a difference between censorship & editorial sense. I honestly can't think of a reason to use the F-word in any article in Wikipedia -- except, of course, for this one -- which is editorial sense. On the other hand, being denied completely to have that linked article in Wikipedia is censorship, plain & simple. -- llywrch (talk) 17:56, 28 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • There are a lot of other articles where it's necessary to use the word "fuck", or another profanity. Alternatives such as "f---" cause more problems than they solve. Powers ^T 02:28, 3 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Mobile editing

• Maybe if the WMF wanted more mobile editors, they'd create a non-crappy mobile editing interface. Having the talk page link at the bottom of the page makes it tedious to navigate to on longer articles, and the lack of any real anti-vandalism abilities hinders those who work on that sort of thing. Grognard Extraordinaire Chess (talk) Ping when replying 01:23, 26 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not to mention the complete lack of navboxes and/or categories to help mobile users navigate around. SounderBruce 03:08, 26 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have a hard time seeing this as an issue that is significantly defined by an absence of the right software; even with brilliant and dedicated innovation in this area, mobile editing is always going to be more limited and time-consuming. I agree that the current options don't exactly do us any favours in mitigating the complications, but even if we had scaled-down or reformatted versions of basically the exact same interface and toolsets as are available in conventional editing, there would still always remain a decreased likelihood (and a significant decrease, I have to think) that a user is going to hit the edit button while on a mobile device, compared against inclination for users on PC. Snow ^{let's rap} 04:56, 26 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • The simple fact of the matter is that mobile users with modern smart phones can edit at will without problems on the misnamed "desktop site". Billions of social media users confirm that typing with one finger is not that big a deal. I am making this edit on an Android HTC H-1 smart phone, and have made well over 10,000 edits on Android smart phones in recent years. The mobile site is a failure for collaborative editing, while the misnamed "desktop" site works just fine. Let's stop redirecting mobile users to a failed mobile site, and instead rename the desktop site to something accurate, like the "useful site that anyone can edit. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:41, 26 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yeah, I agree that there's an argument to be made for that approach. But even with the same basic interface, I still think that the assumption that mobile editing plays a part in our declining editor recruitment rate is essentially accurate. I'm thinking specifically here of that crucial moment when a user first decides to click on the edit or talk button of an article for the very first time. I just don't think that's as likely to happen for a reander on the go with a smartphone as it is if they happen to be sitting at a desktop. Snow ^{let's rap} 10:25, 26 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
        • We make mobile editing far less likely when we redirect mobile users by default from the site that is useful for mobile editing to the site that impedes mobile editing.Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 00:57, 27 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
          • I never did any editing on mobile. Even when I browse, I always switch to desktop version because mobile version just lacks a lot of features. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:38, 27 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
          • Again, I do not disagree that improving on the UI for mobile editing is desirable -- indeed, I think that goes without saying. The point I am trying to stress is that, even controlling for that factor through development of an identical or equally utilitarian interface for mobile users, it is my belief that mobile editing will still yield weaker numbers of recruited first-time editors (relative to overall numbers of users utilizing this mode of access), simply owing to the context and complications of that form of usage. My comment was never meant to decry your position on the current UI or endorse the current state of affairs with regard to the mobile access architecture. I'm saying even if that UI were as ideal as we could make it, I still don't think it would be enough to cause the recruitment of new editors to be as high amongst mobile users as desktop users. For better or worse, there's currently a bit of a barrier of entry for first time users, and I don't think as many users are likely to take that plunge for the first time when browsing on their smartphones as they would if sitting at a desktop, for a lot of different reasons, of which the UI is just one. Snow ^{let's rap} 01:33, 1 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
            • Mobile editing on the main site may work on phones with 7- or 8-inch screens, but a 4- or 5-inch screen is much more limited. Powers ^T 02:31, 3 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
              • I am not sure what you mean LtPowers. I use the HTC One (M8), which has a 5 inch screen, and have no screen size issues at all. I find the screen size ideal for Wikipedia editing. Try it, you will like it. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:02, 3 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
                • The difference between your 5-inch and my 3.7-inch may be enough to account for different experiences. I find just typing on a mobile phone to take at least three times longer than on a computer keyboard. I couldn't imagine writing any significant amount of prose. The limited screen real estate also makes writing template code tedious at best. The absence of keyboard shortcuts for finding text and copy+paste; the inability to easily manage multiple tabs for cross-referencing and bulk editing; and the clear disadvantage of being unable able to preview how layout and image edits will appear on a large screen all would seem to limit the utility of mobile phones for editing. I'm curious how you compensate for these limitations. Powers ^T 21:21, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
                  • @LtPowers: There are mini keyboards which may be plugged into smartphones. They may be used to make typing easier. Also I think the WMF should encourage editors to use tablets, which have larger screens, in case they are unable to use a laptop or desktop. It may assist editors who are frustrated with small screens on regular smartphones. WhisperToMe (talk) 21:17, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
                    • "Easier" is not the same as "comfortable". Powers ^T 21:39, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
                      • If you are interested in comfort then it depends on which mini keyboard you use. Are you interested in using one with a tablet or smartphone? I haven't tried any myself but I can imagine the comfort level may differ between manufacturers and models. I would not be surprised if people are making full sized keyboards for use with smartphones too... As for viewing the material the WMF can encourage editors to use tablets with larger screens if they wish to edit Wikipedia from a mobile device @LtPowers: WhisperToMe (talk) 00:01, 13 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]