Idea of paid entries roils Wikipedia

Wales was unswayed. But he told Kohs he could create Wikipedia-like entries for his clients on MyWikiBiz.com. Then Kohs could reach out to Wikipedia editors and see if they'd like to "scrape" the pages — use them as Wikipedia entries.

Kohs says he got about 10 clients into Wikipedia this way over the next few weeks. (He won't name the clients because he wants their entries to stick.)

Around that time, however, Wikipedia's volunteer crews were tweaking the site's conflict-of-interest policy. As Kohs read one new rule, he could post his clients' copy on his own personal user page inside Wikipedia, rather than on MyWikiBiz.com. Presumably that would make it easier to attract Wikipedia editors' interest.

Wales had earlier told Kohs that step would be forbidden. So Kohs wrote Wales that it appeared the community now disagreed with him. Wales shot Kohs down in a terse e-mail.

"Absolutely unacceptable, sorry," Wales wrote.

Ultimately, Kohs was permanently shut out of Wikipedia. Instead he launched Centiare.com, a Wikipedia-esque — but paid — directory for businesses.

"I think I was rubbing him the wrong way," Kohs says now. "I probably should have just kept my mouth shut."

Wales agreed in an interview that companies and regular people likely are surreptitiously editing their own entries, doing in secret what MyWikiBiz was open about. But that doesn't mean the site should give up trying to prevent public-relations efforts, Wales said.

"It's one thing to acknowledge there's always going to be a little of this, but another to say, `Bring it on,'" he said.

Wales was asked why it mattered if Microsoft or anyone else paid to have copy written on Wikipedia, since there's no guarantee that the site's vigorous editors and moderators would let it remain. He called that notion akin to a city with stellar trash collection telling its denizens to go ahead and litter, since the garbage wouldn't be around long.

It's certainly understandable that Wikipedians would want to limit the rubbish they have to sweep away, given that they spend a fair amount of time fighting PR's more nefarious cousin: use of the site to denigrate rivals. Last year, for example, Wikipedia temporarily blocked access from some computers assigned to Congress after a series of partisan pranks. In one, the entry on Sen. Robert Byrd was altered to give his age as 180 rather than 88.

Still, Wales said he realizes the payments issue has some gray areas. Participants on the Reward Board, he said, have to be sensitive about avoiding conflicts of interest.

"It's all tricky, you know," he said.

The founders of one new information site, Helium.com, argue that Wales has it all wrong. As they see it, prohibiting payments is bad for Wikipedia — and an opportunity for them.

Helium.com lets anyone write an article on a topic. But unlike at Wikipedia, one contributor doesn't overwrite another. Instead the community votes on which entries are more valuable. As a result, multiple articles on a subject appear together, with top-rated ones listed higher.

Authors are encouraged to write on something they know about, of course, but they are given an extra incentive: a cut of Helium's ad sales.

Andrew Ressler, a Helium vice president, argues that Wikipedia's ban on perceived conflicts of interest shuts out lots of people with "valuable insights and knowledge," and tends to leave the site to a small clan of diehards.

"Everybody is getting rewarded somehow," Ressler said. "Whether it's intangible or tangible, what's the difference?"

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