Can we get rid of attempts to use effect as a verb yet?
I just read that whole article. I recommend it. So do all the sock puppets I have created to promote my recommendations.
Why? It is a verb, and it’s used correctly here.
I think it’s just Sifl and Olly trying to make a come back.
As one commenter on the linked article said: Wikipedia could benefit from verified paid editors. The articles would have to be correct and approved by admins. In the process Wikipedia could make some money and become self-sustainable, possibly even better. This way, someone else makes money.
From how this article describes Wikipedia’s current policies regarding paid contributors, I see it’s actually a pretty good space for a competent PR company to manage their clients’ entries without getting into embarrassing ham handed edit wars or otherwise angering the editors and admins. I’m surprised there isn’t such a company already.
It’s annoying?
It’s a bad idea to allow business-speak to take over the language?
whatever!
“To effect change” has been correct for centuries.
To effect that which the divine counsels had decreed. – Bishop Hurd, 1750’s
From the Latin efficere, the verb meaning… “to effect.”
It’s good that you’re being pro-active about that. It’s one of the five core competencies that leads to success in SoMedia.
You are overstating the amount of transparency on the sockpuppet investigation pages (many accounts are blocked as socks without any paper trail whatsoever) and understating the amount of abuse accusing people of being sockpuppets is used for, as very nicely described in this Wikipedia essay.
crescent!
But “effect” IS a verb!
Please let me reach out to you and immediatize a win-win for all parties at this point in time!
Gurf.
As a longtime Wikipedia contributor (like that and a quarter could even make a phone call if there were still payphones around), this does point up the strange and sometimes very thorny role of “editors” on Wikipedia. If you have an article that nobody has bothered to create for all these years, you run a serious risk of having it shot down by J. Random Editor for any number of reasons. Most popular is “notability,” but also, “lack of citations.”
Thing is, a submitter has no idea who the rejecting editor is, or, as we used to say when I was young, “who died and left them boss.” Rather than say, “well, this article seems well-written and has some meat behind it, let’s let the community build on it for a while, and if it still lacks merit in a year or so, gun it,” they tend to delete first and ask questions later.
I offer no good solution, just observing that the current method is suboptimal.
Of all the headlines I wish were literal, I wish this one the most. (Journal: Still am unable to effect the real world with wishes.)
Let us hope and pray that no one ever nouns this verb.
The effects could be disastrous!
This is LITERALLY derailing the topic!
I’m a somewhat inactive Wikipedia administrator (and long time editor), and it was paid editing that drives me up the wall. Paid editors are tireless, relentless, and never accept defeat. Several attempts to shore up the policy against paid editing have been attacked by paid editors themselves who stand in the way of every attempt to reach consensus. It is positively infuriating.
Paid editing undermines the integrity of the project and there is no question that many corporate articles suffer as a result. A now-retired admin, Yellow Monkey, did a systematic review of articles known to have been written by paid editors (but which were subsequently reviewed by other editors) and noted that they had a clear bias in favor of the person or organization doing the paying. There’s absolutely no question in my mind it is a danger to the core functioning of the project.
If you engage with paid editors, you will likely spend several hours a day “discussing” with the editors. They will wear you down. If you take a break, they declare they have consensus. You will get nothing else done, nothing else written, and nothing else edited for months at a time. The fact of the matter is a volunteer editor just can not match the endurance of a paid shill.
Paid editors should be banned on site, and the articles they edit should carry a banner announcing that a paid editor was found to have been modifying them (making companies averse to hiring PR firms to do the editing).
