 | Please refer to the Wikipedia policy on paid contributions at Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure (WP:PAID). |
| Paid Editing Proposals |
| In November 2013, there were three main discussions and votes on paid editing: |
| No paid advocacy (talk) (closed: opposed) |
| Paid editing policy proposal (talk) (closed: opposed) |
| Conflict of interest limit (talk) (closed: opposed) |
 | This is a failed proposal. Consensus for its implementation was not established within a reasonable period of time. If you want to revive discussion, please use the talk page or initiate a thread at the village pump. |
Wikipedia is a public good, created by an online community interested in building a high-quality encyclopedia, and hosted by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation. A Wikipedia COI is an incompatibility between the aim of Wikipedia, which is to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia, and the aims of an individual editor.
While Wikipedia's motto is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", Wikipedia has policies that limit editing practices (e.g., sockpuppetry) that threaten the integrity of its content. Conflict of interest (COI) policies are used extensively in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, and are essential for good governance.
This aim of this policy is twofold: first, it aims to clarify the scope and specify the procedures for good-faith contributions by editors that may have a COI with respect to a given topic; second, it aims to define a set of minimal parameters for prohibiting the most egregious forms of conflict of interest editing, such as paid advocacy editing.
Editing with a conflict of interest can be seriously counterproductive, and can damage the reputation of the intended beneficiaries. Because this kind of activity has come under heavy criticism from the press and general public, and is widely viewed as inconsistent with Wikipedia's educational mission, intentional violations of this policy may result in an editor being blocked.