
Wikimedia Foundation sends cease and desist letter to WikiPR - patomolina
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/11/19/wikimedia-foundation-sends-cease-and-desist-letter-to-wikipr/
======
austenallred
I got this email a couple of months ago. The sales pitch, despite being poorly
written, is interesting. I have no idea how they got my email address, but my
guess is from AngelList.

"Hi,

Shouldn't Grasswire have a full-length, professional page on Wikipedia? Wiki-
PR.com can craft you a professional Wikipedia page for the top 2-3 spots in
Google Search.

Would you like more information? Please reply. It will be worthwhile. A full-
length, professionally written Wikipedia page will drive sales and inform your
clients about what you do best.

Your competitors are getting on Wikipedia. Shouldn’t you be on Wikipedia, too?

Best,

Vanessa Embers Sales Consultant

Wiki-PR We Write It. We Manage It. You Never Worry About Wikipedia Again.

Tel: 888-819-0733 vanessa@wiki-pr.com Twitter: @wiki_PR San Francisco, CA

Disclaimer: This is an individual, personalized email sent by a human. But to
unsubscribe, simply reply with "unsubscribe" in the email body."

The interesting thing about Wikipedia is that a lot of your ability to post
edits without being caught is based on how often you're making edits approved
by the Wikipedia community. If it's blatantly spammy or incorrect it will be
corrected, but I'm sure there's plenty that slips under the radar, especially
for editors with more experience and a lot of edits under their belts.

~~~
bredren
I got the same email in May from a different sales consultant. I asked for
additional information, which named Voxer and two other companies as clients
and provided the following pricing:

 _Pricing

Wikipedia Page Creation - $1500 Includes research, writing, client review,
editing, and uploading to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia Page Management - $49/month (optional) Includes ongoing updates to
your Wikipedia page, removal of any flags added to your page, and a money-back
guarantee that your page will not be deleted by the Wikipedia community._

I ignored that email, but the sales consultant checked in with me later. This
was my response:

 _" Thank you for checking in. I understand the value of your service.

However, if we were to go after a wikipedia page these days, we would probably
make the attempt on our own.

I realize that your expertise could more efficiently get a page up and ensure
it has the necessary elements to stay up. However, we aren't spending money on
marketing right now. We're spending it on product development.

Our hope is that by continuing to prove the value of our service, and by
surfacing greater publicity and user traction, creating a wikipedia page and
having the necessary attention to have it be upheld will become less of a
challenge for us.

Again, I appreciate the check in, I hope you understand our circumstances."_

The sales consultant responded with an offer to discount page creation by $500
if we did it by the end of the month. I politely declined.

We still have not taken the step of building a wikipedia page for our startup,
and instead have continued to focus on making it notable.

EDIT: I think it is worth mentioning that at the time I did think our company
was notable enough to get a wikipedia page. I also thought that done
ethically, it was potentially reasonable to pay for someone who is an expert
at this to do so. But I did not realize doing so would be against TOS.

I myself created and edited pages on Wikipedia for fun (mostly new albums for
bands and music labels) I know there is some art to making something that
passes editor muster.

~~~
leokun
> We still have not taken the step of building a wikipedia page for our
> startup, and instead have continued to focus on making it notable.

Do you not know about Wikpedia's policies? You should probably _not_ create a
wikipedia page for your own product. If you become notable someone else will
do it for you. You have a major conflict of interest, and thus you should just
not do it, and you should probably not edit it either if one is ever created.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ASpam#Advertisement...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ASpam#Advertisements_masquerading_as_articles)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(organiza...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_\(organizations_and_companies\))

~~~
pessimizer
> We still have not

------
bradleyjg
By sending a cease and desist letter, wikimedia puts the situation squarely in
that discussed by the US district court in the Craigslist v. 3Taps case.[1] In
rejecting a motion to dismiss, the court in that case found that the Computer
Fraud and Abuse Act, which provides criminal and civil penalties for
"intentionally access[ing] a computer without authorization or exceed[ing]
authorized access" covers accessing a website after being sent a C&D letter by
changing IP addresses to evade an IP ban.

While the aforementioned decision was only on a motion to dismiss and in any
event was at the trial rather than appellate level, nonetheless if I were
wiki-pr's lawyers I'd caution them strongly not to violate the the C&D.

[1] [http://www.volokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Order-
Denyi...](http://www.volokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Order-Denying-
Renewed-Motion-to-Dismiss.pdf)

------
tokenadult
That is a well written demand letter. It is reasonably cordial in tone but it
is firm and leaves no doubt what the "public relations" company is expected to
do and why. My only thought, as a Wikipedian, is WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG? This
kind of abuse of Wikipedia's reputation by violating Wikipedia's terms of
service has been going on for years, and even if this group of paid
meatpuppets is driven from the site, there are still thousands of articles on
Wikipedia that are edited for personal advantage by people who desire to
publicize their products or services. I basically can't count on any article
about a psychological or genetic test on Wikipedia to be neutral, for example,
because people are in the business of publishing or distributing those tests,
and other people are in the business of administering them. To date, there are
still far too few Wikipedia articles that are based on neutral sources such as
graduate-level textbooks (preferably used in combination, to detect any bias
that might be in one or another of those) and long-form journalism.

The only Wikipedia article I can recommend (barely) so far is one I have done
a lot to edit.[1] It still needs a lot of work, as does just about every other
one of the 4,381,166 articles on English Wikipedia. Editing every Wikipedia
article to that standard takes a lot of work, and most people don't like to do
that much work as volunteers without getting paid, but would rather edit to
promote their hobby or their pet cause, or edit to promote their business.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification)

~~~
davidgerard
The WMF legal department, prefer "get it precisely right" to "get it done
quickly".

In the more general case, WMF finds it difficult to act on on-wiki editorial
problems for Section 230 immunity.

------
bredren
This statement says that wiki-pr was in performing "paid advocacy." I looked
at the Terms of Use for Wikipedia and this company seems to be in violation of
some or all of this portion:

Engaging in False Statements, Impersonation, or Fraud

\- Intentionally or knowingly posting content that constitutes libel or
defamation;

\- With the intent to deceive, posting content that is false or inaccurate;

\- Attempting to impersonate another user or individual, misrepresenting your
affiliation with any individual or entity, or using the username of another
user with the intent to deceive; and

\- Engaging in fraud.

Looking at the cease and desist letter, it appears the real issue here is not
that they were being paid to create or maintain wikipedia articles, but that
the content was not neutral and that editors did not self-declare their status
as paid but rather unaffiliated internet users.

~~~
redthrowaway
You're absolutely allowed to be paid to edit articles. Many large
organizations employ people for specifically that purpose. However, those who
do so legitimately will make it clear both through their username and their
userpage that that's what they're doing. The community then takes that into
account when determining whether their edits are appropriate.

~~~
chris_wot
You are absolutely _not_ allowed to be paid to edit articles!

~~~
redthrowaway
Sorry, you're right. I misremembered. You can't directly edit articles in
which you have a conflict of interest, however you can (and are encouraged to)
request edits on the talk page, provide sources, write drafts, etc. Often
these paid editors will have experienced volunteers they collaborate with who
work with them to ensure the proposed edits meet Wikipedia's guidelines. It's
a sort of hands-off editing by proxy, but there very much are paid editors
working on articles about their employers -- they just don't edit the articles
directly.

~~~
chris_wot
Agree completely with this. That is the most transparent way of going about
things.

------
cbr

        As we have discussed with you previously, we have come to
        the opinion that , based on the evidence we have to date,
        that agent(s) of your company have engaged in sockpuppetry
        or meatpuppetry to, among other things, make it appear as
        if certain articles are written by unbiased sources when
        in fact those articles are authored by Wiki-PR for money.
    

I was not expecting to see "sockpuppetry" or "meatpuppetry" in a cease and
desist! In general I wouldn't expect lawyers to use company-specific jargon in
external communications. What are they trying to do?

~~~
chris_wot
They defined the term before using it. It's quite clear what they meant.

------
pothibo
This company shows the worse in human beings.

"Let's take one of the best thing human has created to share knowledge and
fuck it up and make money while doing it."

~~~
vocino
To be fair, you could say that about most things. That's part of what keeps us
creating though.

------
iwwr
So are there legitimate paid articles on wikipedia? Meaning, someone getting
paid to write about some (non-spam, non-marketing) topic like how some open
source developers get paid.

~~~
YokoZar
There are countless employees/owners of various firms editing their own
wikipedia articles on company time. As long as they're providing verifiable,
true information and actually making the page better no one really cares.

The issue isn't that this company offered to outsource that so much as that
they were consistently promising to create fabrications and biased content.

~~~
britta
If you're paid to improve articles for a company, you "are very strongly
discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on
the talk page of the article in question."
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest))
They weren't following that guideline.

Making an article better isn't as big of a deal if have some conflict of
interest but aren't directly paid to edit, such as voluntarily editing an
article about a product you helped build - you may "make certain kinds of non-
controversial edits", like reverting vandalism, correcting typos, and adding
references:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest#Advice_for_editors_who_may_have_a_conflict_of_interest)

------
pkinsky
Isn't circumvention of terms-of-service a felony these days?

~~~
rhizome
No. Lori Drew was acquitted.

------
davidgerard
For those who want to get it right: the "bright line" guideline is, never
touch an article where you have a conflict of interest. (And if you need
"conflict of interest" defined for you, just assume you have one, okay.)

This is not a Wikipedia _rule_ , but it is true that if you are caught
violating it the media and public will _crucify_ you. And that's probably bad.

~~~
Skalman
Well, it sure is an official guideline [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:COI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:COI)

~~~
chris_wot
You confuse guideline with policies. Guidelines have a fair bit if leeway,
policies have very little wriggle room. If a policy has wriggle room, it's not
been drafted very well :-)

------
drpgq
Is there any current standard for when a company is worthy of having a
Wikipedia page?

~~~
davidgerard
Basically, if a third party hasn't created an article about you then you're
probably not famous enough yet ;-)

The typical self-written company page gets people like me putting an
{{advert}} tag on it.

~~~
tokenadult
_The typical self-written company page gets people like me putting an
{{advert}} tag on it._

You may want to take a look at the actions of an editor who, undeniably,
writes mostly about people and places in the part of the world where he lives.
Some of the articles, and especially some of the wikilinks to those articles
from other articles, for example the link from "Pork pie" to "Michael Kirk
(butcher)"[1] look _a lot_ more promotional than anything I would write about
people and places in my part of the world, where there are also a lot of
active Wikipedians who write mostly about local topics. Maybe it's just
volunteer expression of personal opinion, which perhaps is backed up by
opinion in reliable sources, but it's an odd-looking editing pattern.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kirk_(butcher)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kirk_\(butcher\))

