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WikiConference USA bans critic from open meeting

By Yerucham Turing

A conference dedicated to talking about Wikipedia took place this weekend (May 30 to June 1) at the New York Law School in Tribeca. While the conference advertised itself as being “open to all participants” and welcoming “the skeptical”, one notable and vocal critic of the Wikimedia movement was very abruptly blocked from attending the conference. The critic of Wikipedia’s governance, Gregory Kohs, is the founder of MyWikiBiz, which since 2006 has been the first and longest-running enterprise dedicated to paid editing and content improvement focusing on Wikipedia. (When MyWikiBiz was founded, Wikipedia had no prohibition against editing its content in exchange for payment. Indeed, Wikipedia still has a Reward Board where cash is paid to writers.) Kohs had hoped to participate in the WikiConference in a session devoted to the pros and cons of paid editing, but the conference organizers headed him off at the pass only 18 hours before the conference began.

Kohs registered for the conference in late January, and he submitted for consideration by the selection committee a proposed presentation entitled “Confessions of a paid editor”. Proposals were to have been cut off on March 31, but on April 6 the deadline was extended to April 15. In all, three proposals were submitted related to the subject of paid editing on Wikipedia: the January 29 proposal from Kohs; a proposal from Susan Hewitt entitled “Why paid editing is a really bad idea”, submitted April 7; and a proposal from Dorothy Howard, entitled “Paid Editing Moderated Discussion”, submitted May 21 (more than a month after the already extended deadline had passed). Prior to the April 15 deadline, the only submission that received any “Interested attendees” was Kohs’ proposal.

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Ultimately, though, the only paid editing proposal

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