Wikimedia Switzerland's board and paid-editing firm; passing of Ed Dravecky
The Swiss Wikimedia chapter was founded on May 14, 2006, almost exactly ten years ago. It counts about 250 paid-up members and is one of only two chapters allowed to process income from fundraising banners directly. Recent discussions on the French Wikipedia have drawn attention to the involvement of some of the chapters' current board members in a paid-editing firm. The Signpost investigated this issue.
Discussions on French Wikipedia
On the French Wikipedia, discussions began on April 6, 2016 on the paid-editing activities of Swiss firm Racosch Sàrl, whose website states:
Wikipedia by Wikipedians
Racosch is a Swiss boutique consulting firm specialised in editing Wikipedia articles.
Our clients are companies as much as high-profile individuals, as well as other Public Relations specialists who want to update or add factual information, correct inaccuracies or address the presence of unsightly banners at the top of articles.
In the course of the discussions, outgoing Wikimedia Switzerland (WMCH) board member Gabriel Thullen (GastelEtzwane) wrote that it is common knowledge – at least within WMCH – that two of the company's principals have been long-standing board members of the chapter, while a third is married to a WMCH employee. The company's three principals are listed on Swiss company registration websites as Stéphane Coillet-Matillon, Frédéric Schütz, and Nicolas Ray. Coillet-Matillon (Wikipedia user Popo le Chien) and Schütz (Wikipedia user Schutz) are current WMCH board members; Schütz is the chapter's vice-president and French-speaking press contact on the WMCH website.
The involvement of chapter board members in paid PR work has previously led to significant adverse publicity, as evidenced by the 2012 Gibraltarpedia controversy. We contacted WMCH requesting further information and received prompt replies from Frédéric Schütz.
Our questions and Schütz's answers are below.
Q&A
- 1. Please confirm which present or past WMCH board members or staff are personally involved in Racosch Sàrl, or have close family ties to people involved with the company.
I am personally involved. Stéphane is also involved – but he did not stand for reelection at the recent general assembly and his term ends June 1st. The third associate is the husband of WMCH's administrative assistant. No WM CH staff is involved.
- 2. On which Wikipedias are Racosch Sàrl editors with such ties to WMCH active?
FR and EN at the moment.
- 3. Do they declare their ties to WMCH onwiki?
Not on-wiki. More specifically: the name "Racosch" is never associated with the name WMCH, to avoid giving the wrong impression that Racosch is in any way endorsed by the Chapter.
But this is being discussed openly, e.g. within the Swiss community (see below). Stéphane recently attended the Berlin WM conference and was also very transparent about it; he will likewise attend Wikimania and we're discussing making a Beutler/Lih type of presentation at the upcoming French Wikicon.
- 4. How is the chapter dealing with the potential for conflicts of interest? For example, do you have formal rules forbidding WMCH staff and board members from recommending any particular Wikipedia PR firm to companies, organisations, and members of the public who contact WMCH for advice on Wikipedia?
The chapter has a policy on conflicts of interest, which requires disclosing all potential interests in writing – which was done.
In case of a request to Wikimedia CH, the policy is to reply that the chapter cannot provide advice on this topic and in particular cannot recommend anyone. This being said, one of us remembers that during past discussions someone had informally mentioned Beutler Ink, which was the only one we knew of that does proper paid editing.
Note that in any case such contacts are handled by our 3 community liaisons, not by board members (nor by the administrative assistant indicated above).
- 5. We understand that WMCH board members are elected at the annual general assembly. Are candidates required to disclose to the WMCH electorate potential conflicts of interest, such as involvement in a paid-editing firm; if so, how and where are such disclosures made?
- 6. How many WMCH members typically attend the annual general assembly? How many voted in this year's and last year's board elections?
The paid editing matter was spontaneously disclosed by both Stéphane and I while introducing ourselves, and was of course discussed during the general assembly (which typically attracts around 30+ participants). In the end, Stéphane did not recandidate (but he would likely have had no problem being reelected), while I received 27 votes/32 (second best score) – indicating that we approached the matter rather correctly.
- 7. In the WMCH 04/2016 newsletter, the linked minutes of your most recent general assembly are visible only to logged-in WMCH members. Will you consider making the pages documenting your election process publicly viewable?
We'll likely make it publicly available, yes. In the meantime, see attached a PDF version of the version currently available on our members wiki.
General assembly minutes
The general assembly minutes the Signpost received from Schütz contain two references to paid editing:
- Page 5
The 10 candidates introduce themselves. Stéphane Coillet-Matillon announces that he retracts his candidature as a member as he wants to concentrate on his new company.
The assembly asks questions to the candidates, in particular about potential conflicts of interest and paid editing.
- Page 6
A member suggests that the association should revise its bylaws and discuss the topic of paid editing; this is not discussed further, due to lack of time. Nevertheless, the new board will take this topic into consideration.
WMCH conflict-of-interest policy
The WMCH conflict-of-interest policy Schütz refers to states, in part,
Since conflicts of interest cannot be avoided, they should be handled professionally. ...
- Each member of the Board or of the Executive Management team should arrange his personal and business affairs so as to avoid, as far as possible, conflicts of interest with the association.
- Should a conflict of interest arise, the member of the Board or Executive Management concerned should inform the President of the Board. The President, or Vice-President, should request a decision by the Board which reflects the seriousness of the conflict of interest. The Board shall decide without participation of the person concerned, and the conflict of interest and the board decision will be recorded in the minutes.
- ... Anyone having a permanent conflict of interest should not be a member of the Board or the Executive Management.
User accounts
On the English Wikipedia, three user accounts presently mention an association with Racosch on their user pages, along with the articles they have made paid contributions to:
- User:Wicodric
- User:Pplc (a declared secondary account of User:Popo le Chien)
- User:Manoillon
All three are also active under the same names on the French Wikipedia, where similar disclosures are made. Schutz's user page on the French Wikipedia has declared Wicodric as a secondary account for paid contributions since April 8, 2016.
The Signpost looks forward to further community discussion, and thanks Frédéric Schütz for his candid and timely replies to our questions.
Ed Dravecky, RIP
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Turtle_pin.jpg)
Ed had worked in radio, first as a disc jockey and later with broadcast automation systems. He co-founded FenCon (a literary science-fiction event) and WhoFest (a convention dedicated to the iconic BBC series Doctor Who), and was well-known in the science fiction and fantasy communities. He was an Eagle Scout and a graduate of the United States Space Camp. He was born in Huntsville, Alabama, and at the time of his death, he lived in Dallas. His full obituary is here.
Discuss this story
Of course when you declare the paid for articles, we get to check whether they are up to snuff. There are only 5 articles declared (they can't be getting rich off of this!), but IMHO at least 2 should be deleted - the main sources are the companies involved. The prose is a bit flowery, closer to PR speak than to the usual Wikipedia fare. So we see once again why paid editing needs to be reviewed.
The presence of paid editors on chapter boards is AFAIK not against the rules, but probably should be. There's bound to be an actual conflict of interest sooner or later, and there is an appearance of a COI now. I think the board could make this clear - no money from the WMF - if you have paid editors working for commercial organization on the board or in the employ of a chapter. I write "for commercial organizations" because that is where the usual problems are, and to make clear that the usual exemptions apply, e.g. Wikipedians in Residence.
They should also check Swiss law. If it's anything like German law, they have to declare the paid editing *in the article itself* But we can't allow companies to make such a declaration in the article, or to assert the article ownership that would entail, so they wouldn't be able to do any paid editing for Swiss companies in this case. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:32, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'll just copy the relevant section from WP:COI, the German case is in the footnote.
European fair-trading law
In 2012 the Munich Oberlandesgericht court ruled that if a company or its agents edit Wikipedia with the aim of influencing customers, the edits constitute covert advertising, and as such are a violation of European fair-trading law. The ruling stated that readers cannot be expected to seek out user and talk pages to find editors' disclosures about their corporate affiliation.[Smallbones1 1]
Smallbones(smalltalk) 13:45, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The paid editing company was never common knowledge
I must correct a statement that was attributed to me.
The very existence of this consulting company was never "common knowledge" in Wikimedia Switzerland before April 2nd 2016, the board was never officially informed of it's existence and most of the members found out about the whole issue at the general assembly on April 2nd. People did not have time to properly discuss the issue, the general assembly was running very late and everybody wanted to get the meeting over and go have lunch. News like this takes time to digest. What I wrote about (in French) on April 6th was "common knowledge" because this was a few days after our general assembly...
I must add that I brought up the subject of paid editing in Switzerland during three board meetings in 2015 and 2016, Not once was there mention of a possible COI, and these consulting company partners took part in all the board discussions without even hinting about it.
I am quite disappointed that the editors of this article contacted a few Wikimedia Switzerland board members and allowed them to go over the text, but they did not bother to contact me. I could have set thing straight from the beginning. GastelEtzwane (talk) 13:51, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
About the disclosure of WMCH board members being active in paid editing activities within the Raccosch company
After reading the article and the above, I want to add information. It is not true that the Raccosch contributors announced their activity spontaneously on their user page. During the general meeting, some people expressed the fact that being director of such a chapter while at the same time mounting a company was not acceptable and that it was representing a risk for the Swiss chapter. The interim director expressed publicly the advice that he disagreed with this. I had personally come to this assembly to express concern about the fact that the budget dedicated to small projects and community building activities was not enough in the swiss francophone area, and I expressed concern about the conflict of interest arising from the situation. I was told before by one of the Raccosch protagonist that his activity did not represent a conflict of interest and that in fact a special page dedicated to this issue had been issued (this did not at the time of our discussion which was prior to the 6th of april imply for him the obligation of disclosing his paid contribution activity on his user page. He was opposed to it in fact, and saw absolutely no conflict of interest!). During the general WMCH assembly, I did not have the impression that the local swiss community from the association seemed really opposed to the paid editing activity, and this was a real shock to me personally. I expressed concern to the new director after the general assembly. The Raccosch contributors have been asked by the French community to clearly state their paid contributing activity on their user page, but this happened only after I in fact had asked a confirmed francophone contributor and admin in Paris for his advice, as I was relatively new to the community and was myself leading a local project aimed at reducing the gender gap for which I was paid by the University of Geneva. After expressing my concern about Raccosch to local swiss contributors, I had been told that what I did could be considered as paid editing. As I did not know the exact rules for paid editing I therefore set out to ask for advice and was surprised to see that the matter in Paris (France) was not considered as unproblematic as it was in Lausanne (Switzerland)! The disclosure on the user pages of the Raccosch contributors happened only after the issue was released publicly here on the french Bistrot on the 6th of april, see here: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Le_Bistro/6_avril_2016. It was disclosed publicly only after the protagonists had been asked to do so in private (for those who would be tempted to think no chance was ever given to them to deal with the issue befre it was made public). Furthermore, the paid contributions posed problems because they were making cross contributions with several accounts on the paid contribution articles, and also intervening on the admissibility of articles, contacting firms which had their subjects rejected by one of them. The articles, among others, concerned a famous Swiss bank (Group Pictet) and multinational active in the pharma industry (Debiopharm).
This poses problems not only in terms of neutrality and scope of the concerned articles. The fact is, when there is such an interaction between corporate and NGO activities, there is a danger of not doing enough community building and distributing budgets according to the visibility they provide to the protagonists (all appearing in the local media as confirmed wikipedians and experts). This does not go hand in hand with the necessity to attract new contributors and do more community building in francophone Switzerland. So I do hope this is going to be evoked during Wikimania, especially for new contributors like me, as there seems to be no clear operational policy. One cannot pretend to be a free and participative movement, while at the same time admitting these shadow paid editing activities. We should be more persistent in tracking paid contributions, and oblige the protagonists to have it disclosed on their user page, or renounce to be called a free encyclopedia. --Nattes à chat (talk) 16:59, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]