Emails from a paid editing client: Unexpected news!
Rene Gonzalez, a former Portland, Oregon city councilor and unsuccessful mayoral candidate, sent me several pleasant emails this August, about a year after the story first broke that his city office had paid $6,400 in city funds to a PR firm to help update the Wikipedia article about him.
This case of paid editing on Wikipedia was already one of the best documented I’ve seen. The contract between the oddly named Codename Enterprises and the City of Portland — Office of Portland City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez has an extremely strict nondisclosure clause — before one party can reveal anything about the project or even about the contract itself the other party must agree in writing, unless the disclosure is required by law or by Wikipedia. But public availability of the contract was revealed in the first article in The Oregonian about the project. Codename was contracting with the City of Portland, which is required by state law to provide a copy of any contract they make to anybody who asks the Portland City Auditor's Office (city auditor).
The case has been covered extensively by The Oregonian, Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB), local television broadcasters and other local media. It has also been investigated by the City Auditor's Office in a long two-part report. While the material from the city auditor is available to the public, per Wikipedia rules I won't link to it here since names of Wikipedia editors and their personal details might be disclosed. I will provide the city auditor material to a limited number of administrators on request. Codename's two websites which sell their services, Whitehatwiki.com and Buzzr.com, are open to the public and have been disclosed at User:BC1278 who describes himself as a paid editor named Ed Sussman. Both websites clearly say that they perform public relations services.
The 20 or so emails that Gonzalez and I have exchanged starting this August do add some more detailed information, but mostly we just seem to understand each other better. Gonzalez was excited that he had won his case in court which threw out the $2,400 fine imposed by the City Auditor's Office for the "Wiki affair" (as the court referred to it) and an unrelated fine of about $9,000 involving campaign donations above the city's limits. He'd won the case on procedural grounds; the judge decided that he had been denied due process because no formal adversarial hearing had been allowed before the fines were levied by the city auditor.
The judge made no ruling on the substance of the case, though Gonzalez told me that the lack of due process is reflected in the quality of the evidence. The City Auditor's Office has stated that they followed the city law and procedures then in place.
Gonzalez was so excited he even sent me three articles documenting why the fines had been thrown out.
He did not complain about coverage in The Signpost on the affair, but seemed to request my help in changing the Wikipedia article. Other than a brief review of how to contribute to Wikipedia with a conflict of interest or as a paid editor, I declined to help him edit the Wikipedia article based on my own conflict of interest as a reporter who has covered related stories. Other editors, of course, may decide whether this material belongs in the article.
Gonzalez also included a set of emails, which are publicly available through the City Auditors, about Ed Sussman threatening a libel suit in an email he sent to The Oregonian reporter Shane Kavanaugh on August 8, 2024, the day after the story broke.
I had requested these emails from Gonzalez on October 16, 2024 following a mayoral candidates debate when Kavanaugh had asked Gonzalez “You’re fine with sticking taxpayers with that bill?” referring to $6,400 the city paid to Codename. Gonzalez responded in part that Kavanaugh’s original article in the Oregonian was inaccurate, and that he had to correct it "under the threat of a libel suit from the contractor (Codename)". Kavanaugh disagreed with that characterization and Gonzalez responded that "it's in the email … I'd be happy to share it with (unclear)".
The Oregonian had indeed made a minor correction following a threatened libel suit from Ed Sussman, changing
"The company hired by Gonzalez submitted the proposed changes to Wikipedia on June 25," to "A Gonzalez staffer submitted the proposed changes to Wikipedia on June 25." (emphasis added)
The emails tell the story:
On August 8, 2024 Sussman emailed to Kavanaugh "Your story yesterday has a significant, libelous error. The 'Request Edit' proposal on Wikipedia was submitted by an employee of the commissioner. Your story says that our agency did the submission. We did not." And later "Please issue a correction immediately or I will refer this to my lawyer, who is cc'd here."
Why would this seemingly minor change result in such a drastic legal threat? Sussman was clear "Your error could lead to me being blocked on Wikipedia and even our agency being shut down."
Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed. Kavanaugh responded a few minutes later, citing his source — the chief of staff of Gonzalez's city office (who was copied in the email) — and asking for any clarification. Kavanaugh stated that "Our number one goal in any news story is accuracy & I would love to clear this up ASAP."
The Chief of Staff responded quickly, and did not deny that he had given Kavanaugh the published material. Rather he replied (in full)
I think there was an honest miscommunication between Shane and I here. I thought Shane understood that a staff member from our office had submitted the edits with your advising on process and rules, not that you had submitted the edits yourselves. We appear to have left that conversation without being on the same page on this core point. He has just called and we clarified the misunderstanding. He should be issuing a correction shortly.
The same day Kavanaugh confirmed that the correction had been made and published.
This is not the first libel suit threat made by Sussman against a journalist reporting on a Wikipedia story.
The contract lays out how the project was to be implemented. In brief, Codename would provide training to a person called the "single point of contact" or "designee" in Wikipedia’s editing and disclosure requirements for conflict of interest editors making edit requests. Requirements for paid editors are hardly mentioned. The contact person would gather suggested edits from people in Gonzalez’s office and submit these to Codename. Codename would research Gonzalez and issues about the article and consider the suggested edits. They would then write and submit suggested text to the contact person for reaction and the process could repeat two or three or more times. When general agreement was reached the contact person would submit their wish list to Codename for approval and for a final suggested text. The contact could then submit the final text for the edit request to the article talk page.
If an agreement between Codename and the contact could not be reached, Codename could withdraw from the agreement with the full contracted payment due. The contract emphasizes that the final submission to the Wikipedia talk page was the contact person’s choice. Nevertheless the submitted wording of the requested edits had been written or re-written and approved by Codename and the contact was given a choice between submitting that wording or something close to it or withdrawing from the contract with Codename and making full payment.
The City Auditor's Office interviewed the contact on how this process worked. They report that the contact was uncomfortable with the process and tried to "slow-walk" it. They met several times with other staffers and Gonzalez in Monday morning staff meetings to discuss the project’s progress.
The contact was not an independent editor using their independent judgement. Rather they were constrained by their employment and by the text approved by Codename. They were a paid editor.
Wikipedia's policy on Paid-contribution disclosure very simply defines "Paid contributions on Wikipedia involve editing any page in exchange for compensation, including money or other incentives. Editors who received or expected to receive payment must disclose their employer, client, and affiliation." So the contact was editing the page Talk:Rene Gonzalez (politician) as part of their work in Gonzalez’s office and paid by the City of Portland. Gonzalez was the client and the City was the employer. The contact needed to declare that they were a paid editor, the client, employer, and their affiliation. The definition is "Affiliation: other connections that might be relevant, including, but not limited to, people or businesses who provide text, images, or other media for the paid edit." Codename is an affiliate because they provided text for the paid edit, but also possibly because they provided training, guidance and research for the paid edit.
The contact made an attempt at a disclosure. They declared on their userpage that "I work with Portland Commissioner Rene Gonzalez, and will follow the Wikipedia conflict of interest policy. I will not directly edit his biography page or any other page connected to him." But the conflict of interest guideline is not as strict as the Paid-contribution disclosure policy. The client, employer, and affiliation all needed to be disclosed.
Gonzalez emailed his thoughts on using the paid editing or conflict of interest rules:
“Once the Oregonian article wrongly specified that [Whitehatwiki] had made edits, that triggered disputes as to whether the disclosure was accurate and the right one (paid v. COI), at the same time as a bunch of anonymous trolls made direct edits to the page (very, very frustrating that we were put through ringer [sic] trying to comply with the disclosure rules with the help of folks who knew more, while anonymous trolls were allowed to edit). It is apparent from the talk page that not all Wikipedia editors agree on which disclosure was the right one with the benefit of hindsight, but [the contact] followed the guidelines provided by folks (Whitehatwiki) who knew more about Wikipedia rules than [they] did."
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