http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Core_Contest

I don't really know where to go here. The contradiction between blocking people for paid editing and having high ranking people encourage it? The idea that monetary compensation is necessary to get even the most important articles up to shape, on this encyclopedia supposedly based on people donating their knowledge? Maybe the conception of Brittanica's "bias" as a "blight"?

I do contribute to Veropedia, but I do not like the sound of this contest.

And, lo and behold, there are a number of individual celebrities and for-profit organizations on that list of eligible articles who might gain an advantage from money being dangled in front of editors.

Atacama Large Millimeter Array
Bill Gates
Donald Trump
Harvard University
London Stock Exchange
Mac OS
Major League Baseball
NASCAR
National Basketball Association
National Football League
Princeton University
Ted Turner
Woody Allen
Yale University

So, I guess if your company or your personality is lucky enough to be on this list, it's okay to have paid editors lovingly tending to your legacy on Wikipedia. But, if you're the second-largest coal mining company in North America, you're not in the "okay to pay" category yet.

More hypocrisy to add to the list of Wikia, Reward Board, the 2008 WMF budget, etc.

Greg

What a silly list. Plenty of those articles are fine (and I declare an interest - I've edited some of them) and quite a few not listed are in greater need.

Checking the list, to my surprise this is a good list. The selected articles more or less could be classified as largelly improvable very important for an encyclopedia and needing improvement. I don't know how they picked them, but it is a nice job. Funny part is that they actually need a paid contest to have them improved.

I also like the idea, but I don't get why some articles are in the list like Clint Eastwood, and more notable topics aren't.

He could have used a code or something to trace all the core articles which are not FA's. I wasn't aware that articles like Inflammation are in such a bad shape while more specific articles are being developped.

Geez, the whole thing is Moreschi's doing. It's just more Veropedia spam.

They need to seriously think about bagging it in a big way....

I assumed that they actually used the list of core articles for the contest. Where did they get all these extra entries from?

I think this is a great idea … b-u-u-u-t … wouldn't the money be better spent paying some people I might mention to STOP editing Wikipedia?

Jonny

Bread and circuses. Pay no attention to the Meta "drama" and just go about your business while the project collapses due to our corruption and egos.

Sincerely
The Cabal

Moreschi's Spammy subpage about this "contest" has been put up for mfd... Needless to say, he was not amused...

Some people seem to find this to be COI from a for-profit company, according to this discussion and this discussion.....They seem to have a point there.

Another hot issue is whether the selection of so-called "core" articles is biased : Discussion here and here. Of course, it's biased. Any selection is biased. That's life: deal with it!

This quote seems to be very telling, though :



In others words, it's Veropedia Spam made by people who are promoting a Veropedia COI agenda. And what do we do with Spam at WP?