
Wikipedia editors, locked in battle with PR firm, delete 250 accounts - Jtsummers
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/wikipedia-editors-locked-in-battle-with-pr-firm-delete-250-accounts/
======
raganwald
This should be fixed the old-fashioned way: By cutting off teh flow of money
at the source. When clients are caught directly or indirectly using sock-
puppetry and astroturfing on Wikipedia, banners should be added to the
affected pages naming and shaming the clients.

"This page has been locked by Wikipedia in response to deceptive practices
paid for by Engulf and Devour to circumvent our community standards and
mislead readers."

If you want this to stop, you have to give the clients a disincentive. That
will drive the good clients out and these firms will be left with erectile
dysfunction flim-flam as their market.

~~~
mjn
Occasionally it does make its way back into their article, but ideally in the
same way anything else does: as a factual description of something that
happened, cited to third-party sources. For example here's one [1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Meehan#Wikipedia_editing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Meehan#Wikipedia_editing)

It's not supposed to be retaliation, though, so there's sometimes pushback
from Wikipedians somewhat self-consciously worried that mentioning the
Wikipedia controversy in the Wikipedia article is biasing towards too-meta an
article. Ideally it should only be included if, in some hypothetical universe,
a similar controversy not about Wikipedia (e.g. about Britannica payola) would
also merit coverage in Wikipedia. But that hypothetical is sometimes difficult
to answer.

[1] More or less randomly selected from
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies)

~~~
btilly
_Occasionally it does make its way back into their article, but ideally in the
same way anything else does: as a factual description of something that
happened, cited to third-party sources._

That one gets fun.

I occasionally look at my sisters' Wikipedia pages and laugh at the mistakes
which I know about, which I can't fix because what is already there cites
third party sources which were wrong, and I don't know of third party sources
that have correct information.

If I really cared I could get it fixed. (Just ask my sisters to make an
unambiguous statement somewhere that I can quote.) But in the meantime I get a
chuckle out of things like Wikipedia thinking that I don't exist...

~~~
chris_wot
Who is your sister?

~~~
snowwrestler
From the name I would guess Jen and Meg Tilly.

~~~
btilly
That would not be an inaccurate guess.

Other useless trivia is that our grandfather is the T in
[http://www.cmtengr.com/](http://www.cmtengr.com/).

~~~
snowwrestler
Smart family.

I think it's hilarious that Wikipedia could get something as simple as the
number of siblings wrong.

------
parennoob
Their list of services [https://www.wiki-pr.com/services/](https://www.wiki-
pr.com/services/) looks like a corporate shill's sick mockery of Wikipedia's
community standards.

I hope every single one of their spurious sockpuppet accounts get deleted.

~~~
pvnick
In addition, here is their leadership team ([https://www.wiki-
pr.com/leadership/](https://www.wiki-pr.com/leadership/)):

"DARIUS FISHER

Co-Founder, Chief Operations Officer

Darius co-founded Wiki-PR in 2010 after working alongside a crisis
communication consultant in San Francisco. As the crisis unfolded, Darius'
clients got libeled online. Darius recognized the importance of presenting his
clients fairly, accurately, and professionally on Wikipedia. He has since
built Wiki-PR into the largest Wikipedia public relations firm. Darius
graduated with a degree in Economics from Vanderbilt University.

JORDAN FRENCH

Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer

Jordan leads Wiki-PR from its headquarters in Austin, Texas. He heads Wiki-
PR's Page Management and Crisis Editing teams. Jordan is formerly an attorney
and an engineer. Jordan is licensed to practice law in New York and
Massachusetts. He earned his law degree from Washington University in St.
Louis and his engineering degree from Vanderbilt.

STEVE NEIL

Chief Financial Officer

Prior to joining Wiki-PR, Steve served as the CFO of Diamond Foods, maker of
Kettle Brand potato chips and Pop Secret popcorn. Steve has over 30 years
experience managing operations, logistics, and finances for publicly traded
companies. Steve acquired his bachelors degree from UC Santa Barbara and his
MBA from UCLA.

ADAM MASONBRINK

Vice President of Sales

Adam manages sales and business development from Wiki-PR's office in San
Francisco, California. Prior to working with Wiki-PR, Adam held senior sales
roles at Google, Intuit, and several Bay Area startups. Adam graduated from
University of Kansas with a degree in business communications and
entrepreneurship."

Hopefully this kind of blatantly unethical behavior follows them around a bit.
I don't wish the end of a career upon anybody, but maybe a few doors end up
closing for some of these folks that would have otherwise been open.

~~~
Nicholas_C
The 50+ year old CFO looks strangely out of place next to the 20/30 something
founders.

~~~
matthewmacleod
That's a bit sketchy - I'd posit that experience is especially important for a
CFO role. Too often are interesting ideas brought down by bad financial
management.

------
tokenadult
I hope, as a Wikipedian since April 2010, that this is the beginning of a
thorough change of culture on Wikipedia in the interest of making Wikipedia
more of a genuine free online encyclopedia[1] and less of a publicity platform
for everyone who doesn't want to pay honest cash money for a paid
advertisement. There is currently a proposal discussed among Wikipedians for a
tighter policy against paid editing,[2] and as long as the new policy,
whatever it ends up being, makes for less promotional content on Wikipedia,
I'm all for it.

People who want to help Wikipedia improve as unpaid volunteers have a number
of channels for doing that. One thing that would help Wikipedia's goal of
better content quality[3] is adding more reliable sources to articles. I try
to help that process by compiling source lists in user space that any
Wikipedian can use for updating articles.[4] It's a long slog to fight the rot
on Wikipedia. Reading Wikipedia takes a sharp eye for propaganda and
advertising in disguise.

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

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Paid_editing_po...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Paid_editing_policy_proposal)

[3]
[https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_...](https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#Improve_Content_Quality)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Accuracy_of_content](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Accuracy_of_content)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Anthropo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/AnthropologyHumanBiologyRaceCitations)

~~~
snowwrestler
I hope that Wikipedia's culture someday acknowledges that money is not the
only corrupting influence in a society.

Some of the most egregious examples of biased editing I've seen on Wikipedia
were almost certainly not paid for; they were the result of deeply held
personal beliefs about politics and religion.

Inaccurate or blatantly false edits of this type are easy to get into
Wikipedia articles because politics and religion have thousands of highly
biased third party "news" sources, so almost any ridiculous claim can be
supported with a citation.

------
CJefferson
I would be extremely surprised if (quoting from article) it is only "as many
as several hundred" accounts are being used by people paid to edit Wikipedia.
I know at least a dozen people who have a wikipedia account just to edit
articles to make where they work look good (I suppose it is not their full
time job, but it is the only reason they edit wikipedia).

~~~
jff
Is it unethical for, say, a company's "media guy" to update Wikipedia if his
company releases a major new project? "On October 1, 2013, Initech released
version 2.0 of its flagship product IniIDE Pro(tm)" I think there's a line to
draw between adding some pertinent information to keep the page from being
outdated, vs. fighting to keep all negative information off the page.

~~~
dm2
It's fine to add information.

It's not ok to remove negative information.

What about listing a company under the product or category page or placing
subtle advertisements on the page? An example would be Nest adding links to
their wikipedia to the Thermostat wikipedia page. Is that ethical? Is it
legal? Is it against wikipedias Terms of Use?

~~~
DanBC
> It's not ok to remove negative information.

Why? The BLP stuff has been clear and firm for years: Anything that is
unsourced should be removed quickly, especially if it's BLP.

Obviously, removal of suitably sourced material is a problem so I agree there.

------
jedanbik
Couldn't help but laugh when I saw the Wiki-PR affiliates page:
[https://www.wiki-pr.com/affiliates/](https://www.wiki-pr.com/affiliates/)

OUR AFFILIATES MAKE BIG MONEY.

<...>

Just leave us your name.

------
Nicholas_C
>"I'm much more worried about what happens when an unethical outfit manages to
start getting major clients and start controlling articles that our average
reader assumes are not written by corporate flaks."

Or worse, if Wikipedia's trustworthiness is tarnished beyond repair. I
remember when I was in high school 5 or 6 years back Wikipedia was kind of
seen as a joke by my peers. Now it's taken as near fact. Although I think
skepticism of anything read on the Internet or elsewhere is healthy, I would
hate to see it revert to the first state because of greedy "PR" firms.

~~~
mjn
A hope that's admittedly probably wildly optimistic is that Wikipedia could
help people get better at critically evaluating sources, since everyone knows
you are not "supposed" to take it completely uncritically on the basis of the
publisher's authority. If you get some familiarity with it gets reasonably
easy to spot which articles have something strange about them. Sometimes it's
the writing style, sometimes the tone that clearly sounds like advocacy or PR
copy rather than encyclopedia copy, sometimes the absence of or particular
choice of references, etc. I tend to also start with strong prior skepticism
depending on the area, e.g. articles on present-day companies, but not ones
big enough to attract a lot of real editors (unlike Google, Microsoft, etc.,
which do) are inherently suspect for paid editing, while articles on
mathematics, whatever other problems they might have, typically don't ring my
"might be a PR shill" warning bell.

Can be useful even outside of Wikipedia! Distinguishing between trade-
nonfiction books honestly trying to cover a subject, versus trade-nonfiction
books that are thinly veiled ads for a piece of technology (or the author's
management/diet/etc. consulting gig), has some similarities.

~~~
eru
Articles on math and physics might just be plain wrong, though. (Especially
the `entropy' article, since every armchair physicist wants to contribute.)

------
swalling
Related post previously on the front page:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6580333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6580333)

------
sbov
Depending upon how far the PR firm goes to circumvent their block, couldn't
they be brought up on hacking charges? Could the companies that hire them be
found culpable too?

~~~
rhizome
_couldn 't they be brought up on hacking charges_

Which ones?

~~~
DanBC
They've been told not to edit wikipedia. They're continuing to edit wikipedia.

That seems pretty clearly like accessing a computer system without the owner's
permission, which feels like it should be a standard bit of law.

~~~
rhizome
"Seems," and, "feels," are not enough.

~~~
DanBC
I'd be interested to hear what US lawyers would say, but using a computer
without permission is pretty much the definition used worldwide in hacking
laws.

[http://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-
informat...](http://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-information-
technology/computer-hacking-and-unauthorized-access-laws.aspx)

> _Hacking is breaking into computer systems, frequently with intentions to
> alter or modify existing settings. Sometimes malicious in nature, these
> break-ins may cause damage or disruption to computer systems or networks.
> People with malevolent intent are often referred to as "crackers"\--as in
> "cracking" into computers._

> _" Unauthorized access" entails approaching, trespassing within,
> communicating with, storing data in, retrieving data from, or otherwise
> intercepting and changing computer resources without consent. These laws
> relate to either or both, or any other actions that interfere with
> computers, systems, programs or networks._

~~~
potatolicious
What's "using a computer" though? The trouble with hacking laws as they stand
currently is that they are written so broadly that innocuous uses are
technically illegal, but where no one prosecutes.

I for one don't want to live in a world where everything is illegal - this
hands power to the executive and has been a major source of abuse both past
and present.

Say I tell you "DanBC, you're a jerk, you can't access my website anymore".
What happens if you visit my website? Are you "using a computer without
permission", assuming I own the server?

What is the level of interaction necessary in order for a user to graduate
from legally clear to "throw the book at the hacker"?

~~~
tomflack
While I appreciate what you're trying to say, it seems obvious that "viewing"
and "editing the content of" a website are quite different concepts. If you've
been told to no longer edit the content of my website and you continue to do
so, it would be hard to argue against a charge of unauthorized access.

------
DanBC
These paid editing services are obviously lousy and harmful to Wikipedia and
it's great that they've gone.

How well did average wikipedians deal with the editors and their clients? Was
anyone turned into a useful editor? Or were more people left frustrated and
baffled by the WP process?

------
rrrene
The main problem here seems to be: Why must every company on earth have its
own Wikipedia page?

That said, I can see why e.g. Microsoft, the East India Trading Company and
BMW should be recognized in an encyclopedia. And there are examples of
products (lines) that could/should be mentioned in a vast online encyclopedia
as well (e.g. Windows, BMW 3 series) because they influenced
industries/trends/zeitgeist and/or lifes.

But why, for the love of god, should every consultancy, contractor, forrester
and his second cousin have an entry on this site?

EDIT: typo

~~~
logn
Because wikipedia long ago decided that 'notable' had a fairly low bar.
There's really no going back now and personally I very much like the abundance
of articles, even on relatively minor people/companies/events. The
storage/serving costs for these articles is negligible, but the value to our
society (and maybe especially future ones) will be enormous.

~~~
Ras_
Some language versions have higher requirements for notability. It's hard to
set a clear cutoff point for example in sports, entertainment and companies.
When does something become wiki-notable? Everyone has their own admins,
deletion policies and arbitration mechanisms, which have and will influence
content.

Statistics show clearly that some have opted to include as many stubs as
possible via the use of bots (for example Swedish wikipedia). Tens of
thousands almost worthless stubs (like all US townships and communities) could
be machine-added at any time, but most wikis have steered clear of this kind
of doping. German wikipedia is quite the opposite in regards to pictures. They
don't allow any fair use / citation pictures, which leads to de.wiki articles
having considerably less photos than other languages.

------
ChrisNorstrom
Why are we passing this opportunity up?!?!?!

Oh Jesus Christ, common now we're a community of entrepreneurs & hackers,
someone just create a new startup that's wikipedia for people.

PeoplePedia.com is taken but here, but I've got
[http://www.infopag.es](http://www.infopag.es) so it's perfect for something
like InfoPag.es/ChrisNorstrom.

If someone wants to join in reply to this comment. So basically I'm
envisioning a wiki for people. However, there's 2 routes I can go down:

a) Anyone can create a page on a person and anyone can edit and add onto or
delete content from that page. (lots of growth, but lots of potential for
abuse)

b) People must register to create a page on themselves, anyone can edit that
page and add onto or delete content but the registered owner must approve the
edits.

Which sounds better?

~~~
chris_wot
Neither. Both sound like recipes for disaster, and impossible to administer.
In all seriousness, it's taken close to a decade for Wikipedia to develop
policies, guidelines, enforcements and practices to deal with abuses and get
decent information into articles about people.

Anyone who thinks it's easy to allow anyone to edit articles about people
hasn't tried to do it before, or are just plum crazy!

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
You've only further encouraged me. I'll start work on it this weekend.

~~~
chris_wot
Best of luck - the greatest inventions were created by those with blind
optimism :-) interestingly, it's also how they started Wikipedia...

------
malandrew
Since these companies (or at WikiPR) are refunding the money when things don't
work out they should just hire these PR companies directly via friends and
family and watch those accounts that are editing the pages they paid to edit.
Once they catch the people, they ban the accounts, revert the changes and then
demand their refund. It's a basic honeypot.

~~~
GhotiFish
based on experiences by previous clients, they would not refund the money.

------
mung
Thought off the top of my head so it's not developed or thought through, but
wouldn't Wikipedia do well to find a way of somehow connecting itself in with
academia? It might gain better resources to knowledge and people and more
credibility as a result. And make it more difficult to "just get access" to
editing a page.

------
guelo
Why doesn't Wikipedia sue this company and their clients?

------
logicallee
I've always thought Wikipedia is like the true prophecy of Isaac Asimov
(encyclopedia galactica) - but not even old Isaac could have predicted this!!

~~~
dragonwriter
IMO, Wikipedia has more in common with Douglas Adams' _Hitchhiker 's Guide to
the Galaxy_ (the fictional book featured in the series of the same title, not
the work of fiction in which it featured) than Asimov's _Encyclopedia
Galactica_.

~~~
logicallee
My point still applies :) Could you imagine PR companies warring to get their
'native content' into the _Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy_ (the book
featured in the series)? Now _that_ would have been prescient.

