Wikipedia Used For Apparent Viral Marketing Ploy

jangobongo writes "An article over at BoingBoing discusses what appears to be a viral marketing ploy appearing in a Wikipedia entry. Quote: "Someone has apparently abused collaborative reference site Wikipedia in a viral marketing campaign for a BBC online alternate reality game." "

Comments

Hmm

[Realistic_Dragon]

What's so wrong with it:

It's well written, doesnt appear to violate NPOV, contains appropriate factual information that would be useful to somone researching the thing years from now.

Who can better contribute entries than the creators of things, as long as they are carefully watched over by the editors? After all these are the people who have the largest chunk of the story first hand.

Re:Hmm

[Baricom]

It depends on whether you're looking at the live version, or the historical one. The live version was apparently re-written to reflect the fact that it describes a fictional character.

Re:Hmm

[Breakfast Pants]

Hah nice try. It is obvious that your post is a part of that same viral marketing ploy.

Re:Hmm

[TheRaven64]

Unlike the Slashdot article, which definitely doesn't include a link to the site in question.

Re:Hmm

[Gordonjcp]

Hah, nice try. It is obvious that *your* post is a part of that same viral marketing ploy.

Re:Hmm

[trick-knee]

Hah, nice try. clearly you are trying to muddy the waters so that your viral marketing ploy is more difficult to root out.

Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[deminisma]

That'll really teach those BBC punks!

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Impeesa]

But of course. By posting it here before it makes the usual rounds, it will trigger the Slashdot reflex - though hordes will click the link, none will actually RTFA. Thus, the entire enormous Slashdot crowd will be aware of it, and won't bother clicking the link next time they see it, but they won't know what game or company it's for. There goes the marketing part of their viral marketing campaign. :D

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[mshiltonj]

It's okay. It seems the target market of the game is "14-18 year old girls," and there are no 14-18 year old girls on slashdot.

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Altanar]

It seems the target market of the game is "14-18 year old girls," and there are no 14-18 year old girls on slashdot.

Or on Wikipedia for that matter.

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[sg3000]

I guess it's not clear at this time if the entry was really an advertising effort -- I've read that it was a fan, and I've read it was someone at the BBC. So even if it wasn't an intentional advertisement, you can expect that some two-bit advertiser is going to try now. So, here's a marketing communications tip for future efforts.

Posting the story on the front page of /. will make some people think that this sort of thing works. If you don't want Wikipedia to be used as a marketing tool, then don't click on the wikipedia link for the viral story.

Some people still believe "there's no such thing as bad publicity" -- the former head of our communications department once flippantly said that when someone brought up a nearly universal complaint we had about a previous ad campaign (which had made Business 2.0's 100 dumbest business decisions that year). The assumption is made on the idea that people will remember your name, but not your ad campaign.

It's more complex than that. People may not remember your ad campaign, but they will remember the emotions they felt when they experienced your ad campaign, and if you annoyed them, they will associate that annoyance with your brand. So there is such a thing as bad publicity.

However, this won't stop advertisers because the big thing with viral marketing is it allows the advertisers to sneak their message past the viewers' defenses. There's a concept called "psychological reactance" which means that people will intentionally avoid selling efforts. They'll tune out commercials, they'll flip over ads, or they'll position their eyes so they don't even see ads on a web page. So the advertisers have to think of ways to make their advertisements seem less like advertisements, such as product placements. It looks like Wikipedia is about to be one of the next targets.

If this info was useful, perhaps you'd like to buy my book ...

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Knuckles]

Yeah, cause we all know that 14-18 year old girls don't read, don't research, don't go to school, or anything. Jackass

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Lars T.]

But some here scream like them ;-)

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly not wikipedia, the pretentious "encyclopaedia for and by slashbots."

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[deesine]

LOL


How true!!!

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah! Missing the point, fuckhead.

14-18 year old girls don't spend much time on the Internet -- at least, not the ones worth knowing. Faggot.

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[That's Unpossible!]

there are no 14-18 year old girls on slashdot.

Are you sure?

I've seen some of you throw.

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Anonymous Coward]

All 14-18 year old girls are actually FBI agents with their ties undone and a hand down their pants, looking for perverts to arrest.

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[linzeal]

The BBC has more bandwidth than NASA.

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Altanar]

Because tons of schools allow Wikipedia as a academic reference... Heh.

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Knuckles]

Beside the point, at least mine, which was to call you on your sexist assumptions.

National School Boards Foundation
"Key Finding 4: Girls use the Internet as much as boys, but in different ways. In fact, the Internet may be one of the few public places where girls are equally as involved as boys. The findings suggest that girls are comfortable and competent on the Internet. According to their parents, 48 percent of nine- to 12-year-old boys and girls are online, while 71 percent of 13- to 17-year-old boys and girls are online. Both younger and older girls seem just as likely to use the Internet as their male counterparts; 50 percent of nine- to 12-year-old girls use the Internet, compared to 46 percent of boys. In the 13- to 17-year-old age bracket, 73 percent of girls use the Internet, compared to 70 percent of boys. Overall, there is no statistical difference between the proportion of girls and boys who use the Internet: Clearly, both parents and educators need to shed any remaining stereotypes about technology-phobic girls when it comes to the Internet."

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Knuckles]

Way to talk out of your AC. See my other post for a more realistic picture.

Funny how homophobia and misogyny always fo together.

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Anonymous Coward]

See your other "cooked up stats" post for a realistic picture? If I had a dollar for every "survey finds girls use internet" report published by some bastion of liberal thinking with an agenda, I'd be a very rich man indeed. Besides all that, you missed his point, you witless numbnuts.

Funny how homophobia and misogyny always fo together.

Yep... that proves it, you're definitely a pillow-biter.

I rather imagine you sat there screeching "Homophobe! Mysogynist!" and pointing at your monitor. I'm tempted to call you a nigger too, just to watched your little PC head explode with righteous fury.

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Knuckles]

When you grow up and adjust your attitudes, girls might actually get interested in you, and you'll have some experience to talk from. E.g., you might find out that girls are into a lot of the same, or similar at least, things as you are, but are discouraged from expressing their interest due to the dominant image of womanhood/girlhood.
This goes for maths, CS, and physics as well as for pr0n.

Actually I'm not PC at all, at least not in the sense you Americans understand it. See, people here in general have not been fucked up as much as you are, and the PC thing never went as overboard as in the US, nor was there a need to. I agree that sometimes there is a need to annoy the puritans who you in the US let overtake the notion of "being kind to one another if possible", and turn it into fascist PCism, but nevertheless I will react to homophobia, and calling people "fags" obviously is - after all, you meant it as an insult, and it can only be one if you think it is. Myself, I just feel sorry for you.

Besides, if you dispute my numbers (and I just googled them and am not in the position nor do I care to prove them right or wrong), how about providing your own instead of simply extrapolating your own anecdotal evidence?

Wrt to missing his point, the OP said that this Wikipedia marketing article wouldn't matter since the game is targeted at 14-18 yr old girls, who, he asserted, do not frequent Wikipedia.
This is blatently wrong.

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Knuckles]

One for you: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedians#Gender_ and_sexuality

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Anonymous Coward]

When you grow up and adjust your attitudes, girls might actually get interested in you, and you'll have some experience to talk from. E.g., you might find out that girls are into a lot of the same, or similar at least, things as you are, but are discouraged from expressing their interest due to the dominant image of womanhood/girlhood.

Oh wow... you are whipped. You've got "fag" and "mummy's boy" written all over you. I can just imagine the scene: straight out of college with a freshly-minted A level (what was that about "you Americans"?) in sociology or women's studies. Brow-beaten by the teachers into the usual higher education mindset of getting rilly rilly upset because someone made a sexist remark.

Besides, if you dispute my numbers (and I just googled them and am not in the position nor do I care to prove them right or wrong), how about providing your own instead of simply extrapolating your own anecdotal evidence?

Of course you're not in a position to defend them, you just repeat what people tell you, you fucking parrot. Anyone who disagrees is just using anecdotal evidence.

Wrt to missing his point, the OP said that this Wikipedia marketing article wouldn't matter since the game is targeted at 14-18 yr old girls, who, he asserted, do not frequent Wikipedia. This is blatently wrong.

No he's not. He's quite right. Wikipedia is dominated by men (as is virtually everything on the internet), and the only significant women are older (certainly not 14-18).

Your patronising (and wrong) lecture on how PC never went overboard in the UK is as wrong, ignorant and naive as the rest of your message. In many ways it was even worse here because very few people stood upto it -- it seeped into the very foundation of education, and you are glorious living proof.

Oh yeah, as for your wiki-gender link: 50 names from thousands of wiki users... jesus, and one of them says "unfortunately, did not stay with us for long". Hahaha. Not even counting the fact that no-one checks it, plus this quote: "Transgendered and transsexual women welcome to put their name down! Please, add yourself by time of arrival" Half of them are probably blokes as confused as you. Usually minority groups are pretty vociferous about signing up for shite like this, so that 50 is way on the high-side, to put it mildly.

You're fucked boy... start behaving like a man instead of a pussy-whipped homo. Seriously, you'll feel better about yourself.

Re:Wow, posting it on the front page of /.

[Knuckles]

(...) You've got "fag" and "mummy's boy" written all over you (...)

Get to know some women with an interest in male-dominated professions, or any women at all, and then we can talk. Otherwise it makes little sense for me.

Wikipedia is dominated by men
Lol, thanks for making my point

PC never went overboard in the UK
You are of course free to talk about anything, but it would help if you talked about the same thing as I, if we are to have a discussions. Where did the UK come from?

You're fucked boy... start behaving like a man instead of a pussy-whipped homo. Seriously, you'll feel better about yourself.

As said before, if you should get older than 18, you'll find out about women if you change your attitude. Otherwise, I don't care anyway

Wikipedia will survive this

[Approaching.sanity]

Please, Wikipedia is maintained by everyone. And not everyone is an advertiser. A few hours, maybe a few days and everything will be stable again.

A bit of sensationalist nonsense is all.

Re:Wikipedia will survive this

[Spacejock]

A bit of sensationalist nonsense is all.

What, here?

Re:Wikipedia will survive this

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone read the "votes for deletion" pages for these articles?

They demonstrate, what I consider to be, an important problem that seems to affect Wikipedia (and I love the place myself): too much toleration of crap.

Now I'm not talking about poor writing or mistakes -- I'm talking about Wikipedia editors who are able to talk themselves into justifying any old shit as notable or important, or worth keeping.

Just look at the comments on the VfD page... *actual* fucking Wikipedia editors claiming that because of this fuss, the page/game is now notable. The pages should be summarily deleted on principle, not fucked about with, not tolerated and certainly not justified by idiot editors who are pathologically unable to delete anything because of some bizarre notion that everything should be included and able to perform mental gymnastics to justify it.

And just because some admin rewrote the page to use more acceptable punctuation and bigger words that are spelt correctly doesn't change the fundamental fact that these pages should be deleted -- but yet again, idiot sheep-like editors are suddenly changing their votes to "keep".

It's a wider problem on Wikipedia -- lots of people seem to think that Wikipedia should be a catalogue of everything, rather than an encyclopedia. Every shitty website with half-a-dozen users, every blogger, every Christian-rock singer with a website who sells 20 records a year, every tedious poet with a self-published book, every fucking wannabe artist who paints shitty self-portraits and claimed to be a psychic -- they all want and believe they should have articles, and there's almost always some idiot editors who'll defend them. In short, Wikipedia is collecting worthless cruft and trivia faster than there are clueful editors to manage it.

NO, it is NOT a viral Campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

WHAT are these "editors doing" ?!
on the linked boingboing-article:

Update: 5PM Sunday -- reader Mike Harris says,

        The article has now been totally rewritten by a user named Uncle G to factually report on the game.

The corresponding discussion page now includes mea culpas from persons responsible for two of the bogus entries. One of them, "Jon_Hawk," identifies himself as someone unaffiliated with the BBC who just digs the game.

        Please do not use my edits to slander the BBC. If this were part of a viral campaign, the grammar of the article would almost certainly be better. I suspect the article would have been created at the same time as the game started also. Jamie Kane was mentioned on several blogs on Friday - did not one of you consider it was created by someone who reads such things? I'm nothing more than a student. I'm sincerely apologetic for purposefully omitting the true nature of Jamie Kane.

But the other, "MattC," identifies himself as a BBC employee:

        I created the Boy*D_Upp page from inside the BBC network on Friday evening after stumbling across the Jamie Kane entry linked from the Pop Justice forums. My action was in no way part of an orchestrated marketing campaign on behalf of the Jamie Kane project team nor was it intended for my page to be attributed to the BBC, which has been implied. It was nothing more than common garden vandalism for which I am sorry.

Re:NO, it is NOT a viral Campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

It was nothing more than common garden vandalism for which I am sorry.

So it was you who trashed the Blue Peter garden, you unspeakable bounder.

Re:NO, it is NOT a viral Campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

"I created the Boy*D_Upp page from inside the BBC network on Friday evening after stumbling across the Jamie Kane entry linked from the Pop Justice forums. My action was in no way part of an orchestrated marketing campaign on behalf of the Jamie Kane project team nor was it intended for my page to be attributed to the BBC, which has been implied. It was nothing more than common garden vandalism for which I am sorry."

That's simply not plausible, in the 6 hours between the article appearing and being flagged as fake a BBC employee puts up an article about a band that does not exist, except on a fake BBC game page?
No, why would he create an article about something he either knows nothing about (because it didn't happen= or he knows is fake.

More likely we are in butt covering mode to distance the BBC from the actions of some producer.

Re:NO, it is NOT a viral Campaign

[alfboggis]

I had a look at the original page and decided this all smells a bit fishy...

Jon_Hawk doesn't explicitly say he is unaffiliated with the BBC, in fact the only provable claim he makes is that he is a student. Big deal, like many companies, the BBC employ students.

Even if this isn't a case of viral marketing, I am sure it must happen, as of the BoingBoing correspondents says: I do work at a company that uses Wikipedia as a key part of online marketing strategies...

Re:NO, it is NOT a viral Campaign

[Metostopholes]

There's also another post with a BBC email saying that it wasn't from anyone on the group working on the game.

And on slashdot

[AlistairGroves]

Thanks to this article it's now advertised here as well...

Re:And on slashdot

[Ihlosi]

Yes !

Viral marketing at its very best. Well done, folks.

Duh

[gowen]

Happens all the time, and has done to a greater or lesser extent since 2001.

It'll be clear in about a week, which is how long wikipedia's processes (and there are plenty of applicable processes) tend to take.

Nothing to see here...

Re:Duh

[not-my-real-name]

Many *Bothans* died to bring you this information

You mispelled *Advertizers*, though that may be wishful thinking. What can I say. Someone's .sig was actually on-topic.

And in other news

[myowntrueself]

Online news and discussion forum 'Slashdot' has apparently been used in an almost cleverly self-referential viral marketting ploy.

Wikipedia is working as intended

[Jarnis]

Why are people overreacting?

Wikipedia is Working as Intended(tm) - someone posts a bullshit viral marketing article, and it gets edited to be a proper article about the game.

Anyone can put bullshit to Wikipedia. Anyone can edit said bullshit. Anyone repeatedly abusing their ability to post or edit will see their ability to do so removed - by their peers. Ultimate peer review system. End result is usually positive - like in this case.

It's pointless to get worked over a 'bogus' Wikipedia entry. Wait 48 hours and look at it again, and most likely the wheels have turned and it's either nuked or edited.

Re:Wikipedia is working as intended

[Anonymous Coward]

How is their ability to edit removed? You can do so anonymously, so if you have a dynamic IP address, nothing can be done to stop you.

Re:Wikipedia is working as intended

[Richard W.M. Jones]

IP addresses and IP address ranges can be banned, for periods of time. Of course it's hardly watertight and unfortunately a few people do abuse Wikipedia. Luckily it is clear that the vast majority of people editing Wikipedia are well-intentioned.

Rich.

Re:Wikipedia is working as intended

[geminidomino]

Working as Intended(tm) You work for Blizzard, don't you?

Re:Wikipedia is working as intended

[Jarnis]

Nope, but I do play MMOs a lot - and that term is actually originally from EQ... :)

Re:Wikipedia is working as intended

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is Working as Intended(tm)

Yep, broken by design.

Re:Wikipedia is working as intended

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that if it actually works as intended from the standpoint of the BBC, and drives a bunch of traffic to their site, then they'll undoubtedly do it again. And every other Tom, Dick and Harry out there who has some ware to sell will be posting 'articles' on Wikipedia. Before long, Wikipedia will be so loaded full of advertising (even transient ads that disappear in 48 hours) that people will hate having to use it. Of course, I only think this because it's happened to email, television, radio, magazines, and almost every other form of media I can think of. Just wait until Harry Potter uses a can of Coke(TM) to kill Voldemort in the next book.

Re:Wikipedia is working as intended

[Anonymous Coward]

You aren't taking into account the legions of zombie machines on the internet. What makes you think someone wanting to use Wikipedia for viral marketing without getting in trouble wouldn't just lease time on the same botnets spammers and extortionists use or even create their own botnet?

OK EVERYBODY!!!! SHHHHHHHHHH

[phobos13013]

Just nobody reply and we will teach them a lesson not to use /. as a marketing ploy EITHER!!! Yes, so nobody reply, except me, and all those first posters that already beat me and those that might have had something important to say, like those insightful young late night cyberpunks who saw through this ruse, and anybody else who might have something informative to add to this particular post. But yea, everybody else, DONT REPLY!

wikipedia problem

[slashdotnickname]

Not to gang up on wikipedia but as anyone else spent time doing random page jumps? I was surprised how many self-serving pages are out there, often looking like resumes for people of seemingly little fame or encyclopedic value... not to mention the suspiciously POV pages authored mainly by one author.

Seems like there's a larger problem out there that wikipedia needs to address. Certain aspects of human nature (coupled with the security of relative anonimity) are going to be tough to filter out from such an open project like theirs.

Re:wikipedia problem

[Anonymous Coward]

You make the argument that wikipedia is filled with self-serving pages which to some extent, I will concede is true, but you have failed to describe why this is wrong. Their existence hurts nothing. If you looked them up, then they must be of at least some importance.

In addition I take cause with your phrase of "an open project like theirs". As an open project it is ours. If you find a page that you feel has a problem, edit it. If you find a page that doesn't cover both sides of an issue add your side to it.

Re:wikipedia problem

[TACD]

So, did you edit those pages appropriately or mark them for deletion? Even a minor alteration bumps it onto the 'recently changed' page, where many others are likely to notice it and finish up whatever needs doing.

If everybody who noticed these small problems put a similarly small amount of effort into fixing them, Wikipedia would be many times better than it already is.

Re:wikipedia problem

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you looked them up, then they must be of at least some importance"

Nonsense. One looks up topics in the hope of getting unbiased information, not self-serving points of view.

Re:wikipedia problem

[dubl-u]

Seems like there's a larger problem out there that wikipedia needs to address.

That statement falls into the same category as ones starting with, "the government should" or "the open-source movement should". Anybody can be a part of Wikipedia. Don't say, "they" should do something about it. Say "we"! The editing interface is just one click away.

Re:wikipedia problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Mods: "Insightful"?

If you looked them up, then they must be of at least some importance.

GP noted these articles came up during random hops. So he/she wasn't "look[ing] them up" and no importance can be attached to the articles based on the fact that they were found.

The self-serving pages could easily be linked from articles on, say, the U.S. Constitution by a self-serving page author.

Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats all very well, but the article isn't about Wikipedia so much as the BBC. It was the Beeb that put up the fake article about a fake dead pop star.

It was also a BBC man (from their own network IP range) that put up the fake Boy*Up (?) article too. Although he says he acted alone and not on behalf of the BBC, what are the chances of a BBC man putting up an article connected to a fake BBC website coincidentally? Pretty slim.

Sure it and a few others were spotted pretty quickly, but the big story isn't the vandalism, its that the BBC did it.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[gowen]

It was the Beeb that put up the fake article about a fake dead pop star. Its that the BBC did it.

A BBC employee did it. That's not the same thing as "The BBC" doing it, or the suggestion that it was BBC policy. (Do you really want to go back to the time where everyones email had "Not speaking for my employers" pasted into the signature)

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[Anonymous Coward]

You're both wrong. The original article was not written by any BBC employee.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[Anonymous Coward]

" You're both wrong. The original article was not written by any BBC employee."

You don't know that for sure. All you know for sure is that one of the articles WAS written by a BBC man, and the small window timing suggest that the first one could well have been too. The BBC man knowingly wrote a fake article about a band that he must have known didn't exist.

Perhaps he should have his BBC Internet connection removed by the BBC, until after the Jamie Kane game has finished. If the BBC don't do that, then Wikipedia should do their standard policy of blocking known spamming networks and block the BBC.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[SecretAsianMan]

A BBC employee did it. That's not the same thing as "The BBC" doing it

When you are an employee, during work hours, you are a representative of your employer. Your public actions will have some impact on the public image of your employer. It is the burden of the employer to hire employees whose actions will not damage the public image of the employer.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, everyone! Let's get drunk and naked and do some blow off a whore's back! And kill defenseless baby animals!

Shhhh, don't tell anyone I work for Microsoft.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[Bastian]

When you are an employee, during work hours, you are a representative of your employer. Your public actions will have some impact on the public image of your employer. It is the burden of the employer to hire employees whose actions will not damage the public image of the employer.

That's all well and good, and I agree with you about it, but it does not mean that a BBC employee's actions are automatically the BBC's actions as well.

If it turns out that this employee was doing this for fun rather than for work, the BBC's screw-up wasn't abusing Wikipedia, the BBC's screw-up was not keeping a tight enough leash on this person. Is different, it is.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[dema]

The issue at hand is whether or not the BBC initiated a viral marketing campaign. It didn't. End of story, it doesn't matter what employee editted the story from The BBC on or off work hours.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[bit01]

Do you really want to go back to the time where everyones email had "Not speaking for my employers" pasted into the signature)

Yes. At least then all the fraudulent marketing sock puppets on slashdot would be more legally accountable for their actions. As it is now they can mouth any bullshit and claim it's a personal opinion. Truth in advertising needs more legal teeth.

---

Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[Anonymous Coward]

IANL

But the BBC is still liable for his actions.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[Anonymous Coward]

... it does not mean that a BBC employee's actions are automatically the BBC's actions as well.

But of course, any intellectual property of his would automatically be theirs.
I'm sure the BBC would say that if that employee was busy inventing some new character or situation for their faux boy band project, that they'd be the rightful owners of his work. They probably even spelled that out in his employment contract. But if he screws something up that they didn't explicitly ask him to do, they can shake their fingers at him and wring their wrists that they didn't leash him tightly enough. Is conveniently different, it is.

Isn't that the wonderful part about the legal fiction that corporations are people, and should have the rights of people!
I think I'm going to claim that my hand was acting on its own when it shoplifted that watch from WalMart ...

Corporations. All of a person' s rights, with few of a person' s responsibilities.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all well and good, and I agree with you about it, but it does not mean that a BBC employee's actions are automatically the BBC's actions as well.

Insofar as the BBC is the one who will get the black eye and needs to do the apologizing, yes, they are the BBC's actions.

If it turns out that this employee was doing this for fun rather than for work, the BBC's screw-up wasn't abusing Wikipedia, the BBC's screw-up was not keeping a tight enough leash on this person. Is different, it is.

Agreed, however, that doesn't absolve them of responsibility. Maybe they should fire this guy, or at least make it known that his actions were not their intention. Without word from the Beeb on this sort of thing, there's no real way to know and so assuming it was intentional is probably the best course.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[plehmuffin]

That's all well and good, and I agree with you about it, but it does not mean that a BBC employee's actions are automatically the BBC's actions as well.

What is the BBC if not the sum of its employees? At least when they are on their work time.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[Anonymous Coward]

the BBC is still liable for his actions.

Liable? He hasn't done anything wrong, just something unwise. Liability doesn't come into it.

Tell me - if he'd murdered someone instead, would you say the BBC was responsible for the murder? Of course you wouldn't.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[dubl-u]

It was the Beeb that put up the fake article about a fake dead pop star.

That appears not to be the case. As mentioned on the Boing Boing follow-up, it seems that somebody else added the initial article, and some BBC employee, who had nothing to do with the production or promotion of the game, added the Boy*d Upp page.

what are the chances of a BBC man putting up an article connected to a fake BBC website coincidentally?

I don't think it was completely coincidental. Working at the BBC certainly increased his odds of hearing about the game, and probably made him more willing to add on to the stuff at Wikipedia. But so far there's no evidence of a conspiracy at the BBC to maim Wikipedia for profit. So I don't think we could really call it intentional, either.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[poot_rootbeer]

it does not mean that a BBC employee's actions are automatically the BBC's actions as well.

Actually, that's PRECISELY what it means. When you work for a company, and you perform an action using company resources, on company, time, the company has performed that action. How could it be anything other?

Does it mean that a solitary employee's actions are representative of a company's POLICY? No.

Re:Yeh but it was the BBC corrupting it

[rjw57]

Thats all very well, but the article isn't about Wikipedia so much as the BBC. It was the Beeb that put up the fake article about a fake dead pop star.

No it wasn't.

It was also a BBC man (from their own network IP range) that put up the fake Boy*Up (?) article too. Although he says he acted alone and not on behalf of the BBC, what are the chances of a BBC man putting up an article connected to a fake BBC website coincidentally?

Given the number of things I come across form the BBC on a daily basis I'd say quite high. Besides he gave a plausable method of hitting it. If you really don't believe him why not ask him about it on his talk page?

It's No Longer "Fake"

[rsmith-mac]

Just so we're clear here, by the time the article was posted on Slashdot, it was corrected as to be a proper writeup on the game itself, instead of being a false article based on the game. You can see the original viral entry from the article's history however if you want to see what the initial fuss was about.

Re:It's No Longer "Fake"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a nice example of Wikipedia at work actually:

• 2005-08-12 14:26 -- First revision
• 2005-08-12 21:25 -- Flaged as potentially incorrect
• 2005-08-13 09:58 -- Note about beeing part of a game
• 2005-08-14 06:26 -- 'fictional' incorporated into article
• 2005-08-14 08:10 -- Article is being considered for deletion
• 2005-08-14 23:22 -- Overhauled

Their Name will be Bukkake

[putko]

Although what the BBC has done seems calculating and self-interested, it doens't seem so unlike the folks that fill up the Wikipedia with the Star wars entries about every single character under the sun(s), and not just the coolest ones.

And now that I think of it, perhaps the Star Wars money-machine has paid fanboys (or fed them info) so that they could go out and write up that stuff. I know I spent hours poring over it.

Regardless, by the time this is over, I think the BBC's name will be "bukkake". Not "mud" -- "Bukkake". For more info on the term, I refer you to the Wikipedia.

Re:Their Name will be Bukkake

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. a informal article about bukkake. All bow for the mighty wikipedia!

Re:Their Name will be Bukkake

[Lars T.]

StarWars? Heck, there are entries for every single of Digimon.

Re:Their Name will be Bukkake

[putko]

Are they as awful as this?

Re:Their Name will be Bukkake

[mdarksbane]

But that's what's so useful about Wikipedia. I can pull up a reasonable summary of almost any random crap likely to come up in conversation and have a general knowledge of it and related subjects, as well as links to find more information.

It gives a basic coverage of subjects that you'd normally have to look in very specific types of literature for, assuming you could even figure out what category of encyclopedia you'd need.

If I need to know what an M1 is? easy, as well as other weapons of the era. What about who Lilith was? No need to know that I have to look under religious studies (or, more specifically, the apocryphal book of Enoch, in the extra-biblical Jewish mythology). Heck, as the parent demonstrated, the term bukkake, which almost no one who doesn't live on the internet has ever heard of, is quite reasonably explained.

All these terms are from diverse areas and decently obscure, but you'll find them quite easily in wikipedia alongside "All your base are belong to us," the Tree of Sephiroth, and every pokemon character ever caught.

So, I say, the more entries the better! I hope all those star wars characters are on there, because they aren't going to be anywhere else someone's likely to look for them.

Re:Their Name will be Bukkake

[Lars T.]

Random pick.

Re:Their Name will be Bukkake

[gardyloo]

What about who Lilith was? No need to know that I have to look under religious studies (or, more specifically, the apocryphal book of Enoch, in the extra-biblical Jewish mythology).

      I'm sorry. That will have to be edited. She was the wife (then ex-wife, then...) of Dr. Frasier Crane on "Cheers" and then "Frasier". Yeesh.

Re:Their Name will be Bukkake

[mdarksbane]

And, devil of a feminist that she was, quite aptly named I assure you.

I find it quite amusing that the reason the original was expelled from heaven was that she refused to lie below adam, literally. So he had God make him a more appropriately submissive wife.

As sexist as some parts of the Bible can be, nothing compares to the parts that were left out ;-)

Move the /. think to wikipedia

[leuk_he]

Note the talk page:
"Crappy marketing. Get rid. --4bnormaldotcom 10:01, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Viral marketing, delete --MisterBijou 14:05, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Delete. Shame on the BBC. --Uttaddmb 15:17, 14 August 2005 (UTC)"

Note the group think. jsut like slashdot: there is only one thruth, and spam is not one of them. But note that this article can be merged into a fine description of the game. Deletion should not be part of this. (redirect: fine: delete why?

Re:Move the /. think to wikipedia

[arose]

Note that it was rewriten after those comments and wasn't very useful before that.

Re:Move the /. think to wikipedia

[leuk_he]

Yes, i did note. I do also note taCo does not point to the orignal article, and that if this article survives /. it will not be deleted.

Re:Move the /. think to wikipedia

[Shaper_pmp]

Just a thought, but how do you tell the difference between "groupthink" and "a bunch of intelligent people who've independently reached the correct opinion"?

Obviously, not all opinions are equal - everyone's entitled to their own one, but "I think all black people should be rounded up and deported" should obviously be given less credence than "I think 1 + 1 = 2".

Therefore certian opinions are more "correct" than others - they more accurately reflect objective reality, or have a more rational/logical base.

If lots of intelligent people agree on a particular conclusion, it could just be because that conclusion's the right one. Or at least, the best one suggested yet.

In this example, Wikipedia is supposed to be an impartial, factual resource, or at least as close to that ideal as possible. Marketing (and especially covert marketing) has exactly the opposite agenda, by definition - it's inherently biased, since it's sole purpose is to convince you that something's great or true, regardless of its actual quality or veracity.

An objective, factual article on the reality game is still advertising it - it's still spreading awareness and propagating the meme. Given this, if/when a company is proven to have pissed in the communal well for private gain, I'd consider it appropriate to remove all content directly related to said spam, since even a factual article left behind still represents some benefit to the company.

The lesson here is simple: Submit good, factual content and it'll stay, bringing some small benefit both to Wikipedia (additional content) and your company (subtle, low-key advertising). Attempt to subvert Wikipedia by spamming or posting biased articles, and have the entire meme you're trying to push excised from the site. This way Wikipedia wins ("no content" is better than "deliberately misleading content"), and your company loses (no advertising whatsoever, even low-key factual articles).

Ok, in this case the deletion request was posted before the re-write, and the submitter turned out (apparently) to be a private individual rather than an "official" BBC employee, but I think the principle is sound - when spammed, delete the spam page complately, and subsequently accept re-writes if they're deemed impartial enough, taking into account any connection between the spammer and the new submitter.

Sorry - I know that doesn't fit in with the standard trendy "site X is t3h suXX0rZ! T3hy i5 t3h gr0uP7h1nK!!!111!!!1one!!11!1" whinge, but I'd like to think that's because it's maybe slightly closer to objective reality... ;-)

Re:Move the /. think to wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

8)

I would mod you up if id did not already post in this article.

Please add a sentence "I hope this was informative" as a int for moderators next time.

Re:Move the /. think to wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'd consider it appropriate to remove all content directly related to said spam, since even a factual article left behind still represents some benefit to the company."

If a factual article is removed, then we, the community that uses Wikipedia, lose.

Wikipedia is useful (at least to me) because it has articles about every silly little thing under the sun. As far as I'm concerned, the current factual version of the article should stay, although I think it would be appropriate, in the interests of completeness, to add a description of this controversy to the text.

Re:Move the /. think to wikipedia

[Shaper_pmp]

That's a good point, but as I see it there are two forces at work:

1) If you reward the spamming company at all, you only encourage more spam. We've seen from the rise of spyware, spam and the like that in a large enough group of people there are always a few willing to piss in the communal well, and it only takes a few to ruin it for everyone.

2) Wikipedia aims to be comprehensive, and to cover as wide a range of subjects as possible.

In the case of the "delete-or-rewrite" choice these two aims are diametrically opposed - either an article is left after the kerfuffle (slightly benefitting the spamming company) or not.

I would argue that if the article is deleted then Wikipedia technically gets a slight temporary setback in terms of currently-available content, but the effect of discouraging spam more than offsets this.

Allowing articles to be merely re-written, in the worst case scenario, encourages companies to put up spam articles without even bothering to make them well-written, since they know someone will rewrite them (and likely, better) when the spam is noticed. In fact, you even get the situation where a company writes lots of quick, crap spam, then deliberately drops themselves in it to get free copyrighting by the Wikipedia community.

Note that I'm not arguing that Wikipedia should never accept an article on a subject that's previously been spammed (which would hurt Wikipedia), only that it's essential to un-link the act of spamming and the appearance of a permanent article.

Alternatively, as you suggest, the new article could (in a non-biased way) make reference to the fact that it was originally a spam, so that Wikipedia still gets the content but the company's image is slightly tarnished (ie, no benefit from the act of spamming). This could be as simple as putting something like "This article was prompted by a spam article posted by company X" at the top of the page, eg for six months. This would probably have to be a database flag (as opposed to part of the article contents), so that it's guaranteed to stay for six months and not get edited out (eg, by the spamming company).

Of course, this raises questions of proof (and libel), so it might even be worth going with a more generic "This article was prompted by a spam article", and leave the implication to the viewer.

This combination of our two positions actually strikes me as the best policy to adopt - Wikipedia doesn't lose content (even temporarily), and in fact gets something positive out of a spamming attempt. Companies who spam derive no direct benefit from the spam (or the well-written article), and indeed the previously-spam warning (for some companies, with some target markets) might even mildly hurt their image.

The way of the world

[davmoo]

This is not the least bit surprising.

Every time a new technology or a new way of doing something appears, someone else figures out a way to possibly abuse it and make a buck with it. That's how the world operates.

Re:The way of the world

[munpfazy]

>Every time a new technology or a new way of doing something
>appears, someone else figures out a way to possibly abuse it and
>make a buck with it. That's how the world operates.

Usually, I'd agree with you.

But this seems to be the exception, in two ways.

The first (and less interesting) is that it wasn't actually an organized marketing ploy at all, assuming the two posters are to be believed. (It would certainly seems rather un-BBC-like if it were, and news if only for that reason.)

But, what's really interesting is that it failed. Unlike virtually every other medium out there where marketing agreements and dinner party handshaks force thinly disguised adverts on the audience, here's a case where an information delivery system proved so robust that within days it annihilated even a barely visible and seemingly harmless attempt at marketing.

In a world where television journalists hawk movies and products, newspapers add bylines to industry press-releases and ink them without so much as a word change, and public radio hosts are forced to recite advertising copy, it's incredible to find a forum which not only avoids active advertising deals but ruthlessly attacks at the first sign of marketing infiltration.

Score one for wikipedia.

Re:The way of the world

[emcmanus]

It's worth noting that, almost without exception, one of the first main uses for ANY new medium is the dissemination of pornography.

That's a more telling look at how the world operates.

Sure it was the BBC?

[orzetto]

Looking at the page history, one finds that the original author is a certain Jon Hawk, who claims not to be a BBC employee, and with quite a few spelling mistakes too. He has also a few other contributions to Wikipedia, so maybe this page is all work of a fan and not of the BBC.

However, it is true that this page (in the history of related article Boyd*Upp) was written by someone operating out of IP 132.185.240.121, corresponding to webgw1.thls.bbc.co.uk.

Marketing people twisting facts?

[mwvdlee]

Really????
I can't believe it!

The article has already been rewritten

[Namarrgon]

This is the original, disputed article, and clearly is not factual. The majority of votes were against keeping this article, on the grounds that it was advertising, and fiction presented as fact.

This is the current article, completely rewritten by a third party, which now describes the game rather than a character in it and takes care to present itself as a description of a piece of fiction, with many references to related discussions. Most people seem willing to keep the updated article, despite some lingering accusations of advertising.

There are other article(s) that are still written from the fictional context of the game, and are likely to be deleted.

Original post on Wikipedia

[Anakron]

The original article didn't mention that it referred to a fictional character. For those who missed it, here's the original text:

James Kenton Kane (born 22 October 1982 - 2005) better known as Jamie Kane was a British pop musician and was a member of boyband Boy*d Upp.

After the band split up, Kane launch a mildy successful solo career. He appeard on the covers of Top Of The Pops magazine and NME.

Kane was the subject of several scandals in his last year.

Kane died in a helicopter crash of the coast of the Netherlands.

External links

Official site
Fan site www.jamierules.co.uk

Re:Original post on Wikipedia

[Lars T.]

Yeah, and the fact that the date of death is only given as this year doesn't tip anyone off. And how would one get to the page in the first place, unless one knows about who Jamie Kane "is" in the first place?

Being a regular "Random article"-er, I come about much more annoying pages than this, like pages about local bands only a houndred people ever heard of, or stuff like Lynn Deerfield was an ex-wife of former WABC-TV anchorman Bill Beutel. Yup, that's the whole article, not even a single wiki-link. Or stuff that is just plain, non-viral marketing.

Hell, vandalisations to some wikis last longer than this article is old, yet people go all ballistic over what is not (much) more than the product of an over-enthusiastic fan.

No, it was fake

[Anonymous Coward]

The article *now* accurate because it was rewritten, *before* it pretended to be a fan page about a fake dead popstar.

A BBC man (the IP address mapped to their network) added another site on the subject in the 6 hour window between the fake Jamie Kane page and the time it was spotted and marked as false advertising. Confirming it as done from the BBC.

It was marked for quick deletion, various people added information confirming it was fake. Links to the BBC site, I added links to the DNS showing it as a BBC site rather than a fan site.

What came first the news or the story

[zenst]

Its all chicken and egg and frankly totaly waste of time reading this article as its the kinda stuff people who have nothing better to do write to generate a hey look at me type effect.

What came first the chicken or the egg, frankly I dont care as I eat them both and thats all I care about.

OMG he soo wrote about that befoe it happened he must be a viral marketing peoon, that nostradamis dude ja soooo viral man :D.

No news is bad news

[djkitsch]

I'm sure it's occurred to many other Slashdotters, but this is probablly the best kind of press Wikipedia can get.

This, along with the London bombing coverage in Wikinews last month, is an excellent example of the power and self-healing of MediaWiki sites.

You can rant and rave about misuse, and I agree, but this is evidence in favour when the critics talk about how a community-edited encyclopedia can never be a reliable information resource.

Re:No news is bad news

[Anonymous Coward]

this is evidence in favour when the critics talk about how a community-edited encyclopedia can never be a reliable information resource.

Er ... yeah, right. This is a high-profile case, and you can still not get a straight answer from the horse's mouth (the article currently reads "bullshit" - yay!)

But how many low-profile cases of this nature are hidden on the pedia? How much misinformation does it contain?

The answer is: nobody knows.

That may be your idea of a "reliable information source" but it is not mine.

Re:No news is bad news

[daniil]

It also highlights some of the problems with community-edited encyclopedias. First, if you look at the article history, you'll see that it's been edited something like five hundred times in the course of the past three days, vandalised in many cases (I wonder if the last ones were due to the Slashdotting?). Secondly, he overwhelming reaction of the community to the creation of such an entry about a fictional character seems to be "Delete! Delete!" which is really stupid (it's a lot wiser IMO to keep it in its current state, noting the controversy over the creation of the entry).

These two problems are really just different sides of the same coin: the first reactions to practically any news will be irrational. On news sites that allow the users comment on the news, there'll always be a billion people screaming bloody murder over anything, instead of giving it a couple of moments' thought. And the reactions to negative news are always the same: throw them to jail! Banish! Destroy! The same thing happened with this Wikipedia entry. Someone read about it on Slashdot and quickly vandalised it, thinking (well, not really thinking) that they'd be doing the community a favour by this. Of course the entry was restored just as quickly, but this doesn't make the problem -- that people do not realise that there are other ways of dealing with problematic things than just "shooting" them -- disappear.

Re:No news is bad news

[arose]

IMHO it does the oposite. As I see it the article underwent rapid editing in an atempt to make it factual and NPOV, and was completely rewriten to bring it to it's current state (the 'delete' comments are before that, it wouldn't have been a big loss). Both obvious atempts at vandalism have been undone under 2 minutes.

Re:No news is bad news

[Shaper_pmp]

s/Wikipedia/Encyclopedia Britannica/ and try again.

Still unknown.

Your point?

At least Wikipedia can be thought of as the average of everyone's prejudices, and with roughly equal amounts on each side it should approach the middle ground. Even traditional encyclopedias are inherently biased in favour of the people, language, country or political system that compiled them.

They may (as they say) attempt to avoid bias wherever possible, but that's what the submitters to Wikipedia generally do, too. The difference is, Wikipedia authors' biases, posting histories and the revision/revert processes are pretty transparent and open to all, whereas those of Britannica are closed, opaque and maintained by an even more select and elitist group.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not accusing Britannica of deliberate bias, but everyone's biased, to some small degree. At least if you have (potentially) everyone on the net involved in the argument you're more likely to cancel out some of it than if the final content is determined solely by a small group of stuffy, elderly academics.

Re:No news is bad news

[glesga_kiss]

seems to be "Delete! Delete!" which is really stupid (it's a lot wiser IMO to keep it in its current state, noting the controversy over the creation of the entry).

Absolutely. If you delete it, someone will just recreate it. However, changing a factual page that is already there has a higher moral threshold. Changing an existing page is clearly more "vandalistic" than simply throwing up a false one.

Of course, this only works if it's a campaign like this one. I'm sure the wiki world has it's fair share of trolls and a lot of their stuff would be valid for outright deletion. This on the other hand does relate to an actual event, and that in itself is worth of a mention, as is the involvment in wikipedia in this story.

Slashdot used for `Apparent` viral news ploy

[zenst]

Technicaly this subject shoudl appear on the BBC site to help circular promote this digital rubbish.

Wikipedia truth and fiction

[br00tus]

Wikipedia says all over it that anyone can edit and that it is not a "reliable" source, so this is not a big deal.

I see the larger problem with Wikipedia in that it is run by a millionaire, Jimbo Wales, who has said he manages it according to the philosophy of Ludwig von Mises. And the powers-that-be who have a hand in shaping rules, what content gets in, which users get banned, follow on some level from this.

While anyone can contribute, in a democratic fashion, there is a counter-force to this, in the same manner that the US is a democratic republic, with a counterforce of an authoritarian financial hierarchy, with landlords and tenants, moneylenders and debtors, company owners and workers. In the same manner, while anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, the "cabal" as they themselves mockingly call it, headed by Jimbo Wales, and with his various lieutenants in Arbcom (the Arbitration Committee), on the Mediation Committee, as bureaucrats, as admins, exercises a great deal of change over things, and points in the direction things will go.

There is a project on Wikipedia whose premise is that the English Wikipedia users are mostly from England and its former colonies and they have a certain view of the world. Plus demographically the users are generally people like me, white male professionals from the US and whatnot. Wikipedia says it is "neutral point of view" on topics like Palestine and Israel, the US vs. the USSR and that sort of thing, but that's BS. But anyhow the "counetring systematic bias" project mainly works on things by spending time writing articles about stuff most white male professionals from the US don't spend much time thinking about, like culture in Burundi and stuff like that.

Wikipedia does very well in it's top categories of mathematics and science, because most everyone is on the same page about these things. Wikipedia completely falls apart in terms of neutrality with things like the John Kerry and George W. Bush pages. They are not neutral. And it has not gotten better, and I am not Panglossian about the worsening situation, unlike the Wikipedia core group. It is obvious to me that the main categories that experience massive edit wars and fights like history and society, will eventually break off into different wikis. The most hardcore John Kerry people will go to one of the wikis, the most hardcore Bush people will go to another wiki. Then these groups might draw more people. This has already happened to some extent. And I tell people - don't bang your head against a brick wall. See how these things will not work out for you on Wikipedia, then go check out a wiki encyclopedia run by either a conservative (wikinfo) or by liberals (dkosopedia or Demopedia). And if all you're interested in is looking up articles on Wikipedia in quantum mechanics - well then, you'll probably be happy with Wikipedia. And I'm sure all the non-political people would love to see all the fanatic Air America listeners and Fox News watchers leave (actually that's being mild, communists and fascists are the real ends of the extremes that exist on Wikipedia).

Re:Wikipedia truth and fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

You accurately identify some serious flaws, but it gets worse.

Wikipedia has a ridiculous Zionist agenda that has become more intense and twisted as time has gone on. Some articles are so colored by this slant that they start to bend reality and rewrite history.

There are serious problems with Wikipedia. It's a great idea but it just can't deliver thanks to the blinkered, zionist attitude of those who moderate, edit and of course unfortunately run it.

Re:Wikipedia truth and fiction

[Capt'n Hector]

Wikipedia does very well in it's top categories of mathematics and science, because most everyone is on the same page about these things.

sure.

Re:Wikipedia truth and fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

What percentage of articles reflect this "blinkered, zionist attitude"? I think if you include all 10 articles on Palestine, about nil.

Re:Wikipedia truth and fiction

[grimJester]

There is also loads of bias in the way many aricles refer to events, places, organizations etc. that are American without mentioning this fact. An article on liberal media bias or intelligent design gives the wrong impression if you don't mention that these are mainly US phenomena.

Interestingly, as I browsed for an example, I found the text box "The perspective and/or examples in this article do not represent a world-wide view. Please edit the article to improve its geographical balance." in the article on media bias. I haven't seen it before, so I assume someone else has noticed the problem.

Re:Wikipedia truth and fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Reread post. In particular --> "most everyone"

Re:Wikipedia truth and fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really Wikipedia's fault. It's the fact that the Zionist conspiracy controls the entire world.

Unfortunately, the statement above does not provide enough information for others to discern whether or not I am joking. Come to think of it, the parent might be joking. But maybe not.

Nice

[Icephreak1]

Well shit, now that the Wikipedia entry has been Slashdotted, I bet the game's producers are beyond giddy. Perhaps the game's producers submitted this Slashdot story to begin with.

- IP

Re:Nice

[gowen]

now that the Wikipedia entry has been Slashdotted,

Yeah, that's likely to happen, what with Wikipedia having more traffic than slashdot

Re:Nice

[RidiculousPie]

However, the article is linked on the front page of slashdot, but it is only one of many pages in wikipedia.

"Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forfty percent of all people know that."

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

It got Slashdotted? Hard to imagine...Wikipedia gets way more traffic than Slashdot does: check out Alexa's traffic graphs comparing the two: last three months, last two years.

Why

[smallguy78]

If it's an 'online alternate reality game' what benefit would there be to the BBC, in having a viral marketing campaign? There's no advertising revenue gained from attracted a lot of new (mostly nerds) to their website.

Re:Why

[BenjyD]

The BBC still has to justify its existence and funding to government and to the public, who pay for it. Viewing figures and page impressions give them evidence that their output is still worthwhile.

Re:Why

[STrinity]

ARGs are advertising.

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

ARGS are not advertising. ARGS are, as the G stands for, Games. The BBC is trying out a new form of entertainment - it already does TV, Drama, Films, a great website. (and remember, BBC is funded by government and TV licences)

Whilst it is true that some ARGs that have been done have been funded by companies - they can be compared with a company supporting a sports match - they benefit by positive press from playing the game.

Teaching them a lesson

[blyloveranger]

I think my favorite part of the article is when someone says:

.I've marked the Boy*d Upp and Jamie Kane articles on Wikipedia for deletion. Hopefully this will teach people that Wikipedia isnt the place for viral marketing.

Since I can only imagine how many more people have seen the wikipedia page and heard about the game, after people started making a big deal about it and writing articles about it. I can only imagine what all viral advertizing firms are thinking. Damn, well I guess we can't use wikipedia to try to gain recognition for our product, because if someone notices, our pages will get slashdotted then no one will be able to view them, because too many people will be viewing our product... Oh, wait...

Despite that, I am still not sure what the big deal was in the first place. It was just good fun, and didn't really harm anyone. What is wrong with a wikipedia page about a fake artist, as far as some people are concerned (see earlier slashdot article about mmorpg) there actually is/will be no difference between reality and what is found on the internet, so in those terms the BBC is actually ahead of the game.

Re:Teaching them a lesson

[An Onerous Coward]

If I were a "viral marketer", I'd look at the results of this. Sure, the game achieved a sort of notoriety from the fake Wikipedia article. But that's certainly countered by the fact that very few Slashdotters are fourteen year old girls (their primary demographic), and those few fourteen year old girls are the next generation of geek chicks, probably not ideal candidates for playing some airheaded game about a fake boy-band.

Meanwhile, they've brought their game to the attention of the Script Kiddie Brigade, and made their presence as a hangout four teenieboppers known to tens of thousands of (occasionally badly socialized) males.

All this might be a fine reaction for some organization that was trying to attract the /. demographic. But in this case, I suspect that it will attract twenty pedophiles, a thousand troublemakers and miscreants, and approximately five people the marketers actually wanted.

Re:Teaching them a lesson

[Jeff DeMaagd]

What is wrong with a wikipedia page about a fake artist, as far as some people are concerned (see earlier slashdot article about mmorpg) there actually is/will be no difference between reality and what is found on the internet, so in those terms the BBC is actually ahead of the game.

What I see could be wrong about it is that the people that let other people write reality like this would have less of a leg to stand on when they complain about "W's" revisionism or the revisionism of any company or government. Hey, if people on the Internet can try to write things in and out of existence, then why not "W"? Unfortunately, the consequences in my example are staggering.

Re:Teaching them a lesson

[Shaper_pmp]

"Damn, well I guess we can't use wikipedia to try to gain recognition for our product, because if someone notices, our pages will get slashdotted then no one will be able to view them, because too many people will be viewing our product... Oh, wait..."

Yeah - the first few times it happens it'll be News, because it's an overt attack on what aims to be an impartial information resource. After a couple of attempts it'll hopefully cease being news, and each new spam article will just be quietly disposed-of, with no free publicity for the company concerned.

As an aside, this is a general problem of mass-media - you can get famous, easily, for doing something antisocial, so for those who seek fame (advertisers), doing something antisocial is the quickest way to achieve their objectives.

For example, witness the "road rage" craze a few years ago in the UK (possibly elsewhere, too). One guy cut someone up in his car. The other guy chased him down in the car, pulled over to the side of the road and beat him to death with a tyre-iron (or similar). He then jumped in his car and drove off, leaving the dead guy's girlfriend sat traumatised in the car.

The media immediately dubbed this "road rage", and within weeks incidents of roadside beatings were cropping up all over the place. The punch-line of the whole thing is this: when it came to trial, no-one could prove that there was another person involved, and eventually (IIRC) the girlfriend was actually convicted of the murder, having made the entire incident up to cover her murder of her boyfriend.

Nevertheless, "road rage" incidents continued to be reported for years afterwards, eventually dying out to the present once-in-a-blue-moon frequency we have now.

People believe what they're told, and follow the herd. Deny antisocial types like Wiki-spammers the oxygen of publicity, and you remove the single reason for them to do it.

"Despite that, I am still not sure what the big deal was in the first place. It was just good fun, and didn't really harm anyone. What is wrong with a wikipedia page about a fake artist"

Well, the fact that Wikipedia's supposed to be an informative resource, and such things are deliberately misleading. Seriously, there's a place for deadpan humour and there's a place for fact recording. If you really can't see what's wrong with deliberately passing off fantasy as reality then you should seek psychiatric help immediately, or wait until you naturally age past five.

Mixing reality with fantasy is great, as long as you know it's happening (eg, the Illuminatus Trilogy, one of my favourite books). Confusing fantasy with reality when you believe the material to be strictly accurate is extremely dangerous - at best you get a history you can't trust an inch, and at the worst you get religion.

"as far as some people are concerned... there actually is/will be no difference between reality and what is found on the internet, so in those terms the BBC is actually ahead of the game."

Very amusing. So do you seriously not understand the importance of having at least one single accurate record of factual history, or are you just frantically trolling?

OMG

[Michael_Munks]

It's infected slashdot.

Re:Hmm very interesting story, deserves some thoug

[Spad]

So, not a fan then?

Oh the shame

[squoozer]

What has happend to /.. We can't even cause a slow down on a little site like wikipedia any more and worse they they are rubbing our noses in it with the little post at the bottom of the article. We must fight back. Hordes, click those links. Leave those servers a smoking pile of twisted metal.

Wikipedia page history

[citizenc]

It's interesting to start at the original entry and then progress through the various versions. You can really see the Wiki editorial process at work.

It was caught in 7 hours

[citizenc]

Seriously. The article was caught, according to Wikipedia's timestamps, within 7 hours:

14:26, 12 August 2005
21:25, 12 August 2005 - "The factual accuracy of this article is disputed."

Isn't this EXACTLY how Wikipedia was designed to operate? ;-)

Change indicator

[Frans Faase]

Wikipedia should introduce a "change indicator" that uses background colours to indicate which parts of the text of an article have been modified (deleted) in the past ten days.

Re:Change indicator

[fcw]

Wikipedia should introduce a "change indicator" that uses background colours to indicate which parts of the text of an article have been modified (deleted) in the past ten days.

They already have the history tab on every page, which does a much better job than any simple background-colour scheme would. Moreover, any such coloration of text backgrounds would make busy pages, such as on breaking news stories, hideously unreadable.

Re:Change indicator

[GroundWire]

hmm.. Could this be the "history" tab you're referring to? Then you can diff it against any of the older edits (with their timestamps to tell how old they are)... then you get your color code you asked for.

Or am I misunderstanding, and you want something else?

- Joel

Re:Change indicator

[Frans Faase]

Yes, that is true, but it would still require you to go through a number of steps yourself and draw your own conclusion. And not for everyone this would be a trivial task to perform.

Re:Change indicator

[Frans Faase]

Beter in what sense. Yes, it gives very detailed information, but it requires a lot of clicking and thinking to get an idea of what kind of changes have been made to the text.

Should Jamie Kane be treated like Lightsabers?

[ace_brickman]

I'm assuming you all have seen this [www.howstuffworks.com] already, but may I use it now as a point in the discussion at hand? Would it now be considered viral marketing on Lucasfilm's part to place a lightsaber how-to in an otherwise factually sound encyclopediac (sp?) site, or yet just another clever application of geek humor? Should our feelings on this Wiki entry == feelings about the HSW article?


--btw, I am a StarWars fan, and would love to get my hands on some Diatium power cells if given the chance!

The myth of consensus

[Anonymous Coward]

is that it can't be gamed. Google and the other search engines which try to use some sort of consensus criteria (# links, etc...) to determine page rankings have found this not to be true. There is an ongoing and unresolved battle between the search engines and spammers on this. Wikepia is no different. It just hasn't been hit by spammers that hard yet.

It's obvious!

[dancallaghan]

... that the fan site is fake, because it doesn't look like my 12-year-old sister made it using 1997-vintage Geocities Page Builder (cf a lot of other fan sites out there).

Re:It's obvious!

[dancallaghan]

OMG so there is a reason it says "check those URLs!" (the fan site is here)

If you want to advertise your business...

[wikinerd]

...you are free to come to my wiki JnanaBase which has only one policy: You are free to do whatever you want within the minimum possible legal and decency limitations. The goal of the project is to document all information that exists in the universe, thus creating a copy of our brain (we will later organise and manage all that information with some special software we develop). Yes, you can write an article about your business or even a biography for your dog, as long as the information is useful and accurate. We created this project as an alternative to Wikipedia because we believe that there should be no limits in information.

Re:If you want to advertise your business...

[Anonymous Coward]

We created this project as an alternative to Wikipedia because we believe that there should be no limits in information.

Wikipedia believes that information should be as accurate as possible.

Good luck with that, given your policies.

Re:If you want to advertise your business...

[emcmanus]

Best of luck overcoming the network effect.

Troll Tuesday came early this week!

[richie2000]

Sad news ... Jamie Kane, dead at 23

I just heard some sad news on a news podcast - boy band singer Jamie Kane was found dead in a helicopter off the Dutch coast this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly a British icon.

Re:FP

[utnow]

Late breaking news! Somebody made a submission to Wikipedia containing false information intended only to drive links to their product! Surely there's a geek out there working on some cool hobby science project, OSS project, gadget, or gizmo... anything better than this?!? I can see tomorrow's headline. "Slashdot Member Expresses Doubt over Meaningless Headline"

Bias

[Stalyn]

Wikipedia has bias but what human institution doesn't? At least with Wikipedia we can see it at such a large scale one could actually examine it in great detail ( dissertation perhaps ). Anyway my point is the key is not to eliminate bias ( which might be impossible ) but to recognize it. I think Wikipedia teaches us all that lesson.

Linking to Wikipedia

[PhilHibbs]

When submitting a Slashdot story, please consider linking to a specific page revision (from the History page), rather than to the normal article link. This way, Slashdotters visiting the site need not be subjected to pages full of pictures of penises. This article was only vandalised three times today, and none were terribly obscene, but it's happened in the past and reducing the impact of trollish behaviour should in turn reduce such behaviour.

This is not official Wikipedia policy, just a suggestion from a Slashdotter and a Wikipedian.

Re:Linking to Wikipedia

[grimJester]

This way, Slashdotters visiting the site need not be subjected to pages full of pictures of penises.

To be honest, I think I speak for most of us when I say the ensuing Slashdot discussion would be more entertaining that way.

Respectfully,
Robert "Bob" Goatse, PhD

Move along, nothing to see.

[dustrider]

Seems like there's been an official denial by the BBC, over at BoingBoing.

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/15/bbc_wikipedia _is_not.html

I think everyone agrees that information should be kept as clean as possible and that something as helpfull and so obviously in everyones best interest as wikipedia should be kept free of commercialism, thankfully, the BBC tend to agree too:

From BoingBoing:
"Just to confirm, the BBC would never use Wikipedia as a marketing tool. The first posting was simply a case of a fan of the game getting into the spirit of alternative reality a little too much. The follow up posting was made by a fan of the game who happens to work for the BBC and was made without the knowledge of anyone in the Jamie Kane Team or BBC Marketing."

Update: No its not

[AceJohnny]

Extra Extra! Read all about it!

Actually, it seems to be more of a case of fanbase going wild. From the article:

I'm Rob, the Senior Producer on the Jamie Kane game. A couple of people have emailed the BBC asking for an official response to the Jamie Kane/Wikipedia thing. If you guys still have space for it, would you mind adding in the following, as there seems to be some confusion:

"Just to confirm, the BBC would never use Wikipedia as a marketing tool. The first posting was simply a case of a fan of the game getting into the spirit of alternative reality a little too much. The follow up posting was made by a fan of the game who happens to work for the BBC and was made without the knowledge of anyone in the Jamie Kane Team or BBC Marketing."

Re:Update: No its not

[Refrag]

Why should we believe anything that a "news company" says when they knowingly plant fake articles in their own media?

Re:Update: No its not

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why should we believe anything that a "news company" says when they knowingly plant fake articles in their own media?

Why, since you believe everything on Slashdot of course.

Re:Update: No its not

[rjw57]

Firstly because they're not a company? Secondly because they are not a news corporation - they are a broadcasting corporation (the name kinda gives it away). Thirdly because the original author of the article was just some student somewhere with nothing to do with the BBC at all. Fourthly because the damn game has been running for ages so this is a bit of a piss poor time to market it. Fifthly, the BBC would get far more milage out of advertising it on its won damn site than on a random Wikipedia page.

'Asshole' (as I believe you 'merkins say).

wikipedia archive

[cinnamon colbert]

this thread points out the need for a wiki archive; on historical/scholarship grounds this aritcle should not be deleted into nothing, but deleted into the archive - or am i unaware of, say, the wiki snapshot, that takes asnapshot of thew ikipedia every 15 minutes..

Re:wikipedia archive

[wikinerd]

I usually copy the most interested deleted Wikipedia entries to my wiki, but I think Wikipedia is already archived automatically by many sites around the world, including the Internet Archive.

Re:wikipedia archive

[Peyna]

How many times are you going to plug your own craptastic wiki on this discussion?

My personal favorite article on your wiki:

http://jnana.wikinerds.org/index.php/Food

BBC Policy Clarified

[ear1grey]

I contacted the BBC to ask for clarification on the events and received the unequivocal response that:

the BBC would never use Wikipedia as a marketing tool.

Re:BBC Policy Clarified

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC claims there was an unauthorized edit done from within BBC. Does that mean someone has been fired or disciplined as a result? I don't hear anything. Silence sounds like complicity.

Re:BBC Policy Clarified

[Jamesday]

That would be an over-reaction. The employee apparently had no ill intent and no lasting harm, or even significant harm, was done.

Self Promotion

[Kamiza Ikioi]

NPOV is far from the only guidelines at Wikipedia, though. There are two other issues... Self Promotion and Original Work.

Now, it is true that a creator or someone involed can often be a good source of information. I write for a few entries in such a position. However, I've also authored what I thought werea few good factual entries, but rightly (it took a bit of pride swallowing to admit) removed (as original Works, not self promotion).

If you are self promoting, the entry will be wiped out. For instance, you cannot make a personal entry. Just because you as Joe_Blow include factual information, doesn't mean you are a "significant person" to be put in an encyclopedia.

Second, you may have a great theory for how the universe started or a unifying theory of all things. Unfortunately, if you are not published elsewhere first, and get some level of recognition, do not post it to Wikipedia. Instead, post it to Wikibooks or elsewhere. If you get some recognition, gain some sources that site you, then you can move it over to Wikipedia (provided you either A) present it entirely as NPOV or B) Segregate your opinion into one section, and provide another section and openly encourage others to present arguements against).

The original (and this current) seems like advertisement... still. This is info you find on the game's site, not Wikipedia. Is Wikipedia going to do an entry on games barely over a week after release now? Unless it has even some minor social impact, it should be deleted... and that's where my vote is going. Scrap it, and tell the BBC to go pay for its advertising on Google like everyone else. It got free press from /., so, good job for their PR team, now it's time for them to quit screwing around with the legitimacy of earnest sites like Wikipedia.

I've voting deletion.

You've got to be f'ing kidding me.

[kokoloko]

If this were part of a viral campaign, the grammar of the article would almost certainly be better.

Yes, if there is any group that helps to promote the use of proper English above all else, it is advertisers.

Re:Hmm very interesting story, deserves some thoug

[wizzdude]

Wow. That was passionate. Confusing, slightly self-contradicting and quite frankly plain rude but passionate all the same.

I wonder what makes you feel this way? Please explain your obviously reasoned arguments behind such comments.

BBC? Nooo!..

[mi]

A profit-driven corporation -- maybe. But for people-owned BBC to do anything remotely unethical? No way!..

Gebyy zl oruvaq...

The only thing of interest...

[dame4jc]

The only thing I found interesting about this whole mess is the reference to wikipedia being slashdotted...and then the pageview reports comparing wikipedia to slashdot.

Holy crap! I had NO idea that Wikipedia was getting that much traffic.

One month comparison http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? &range=1m&size=medium&compare_sites=slashdot.org&y =p&url=wikipedia.org and a two year comparison, http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? &range=2y&size=large&compare_sites=slashdot.org&y= p&url=wikipedia.org#top

Good

[nuclearpenguins]

Not to turn this into "flamebait" or whatever you kids are calling it nowadays, I am no huge fan of Wikipedia. I'd much rather have a resource that's peer-reviewed and professional, i.e. no sources/ "facts" from the general population. Sure, a free resource of info is all well-and good, but this allowing everyone and their brother to edit articles is unacceptable.

Interesting

[jonoton]

That the same day the BBC have an article about wikipedia....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4152860.stm

No, they didn't

[Jackdaw Rookery]

Via BoingBoing.net:

Rob Cooper, the Senior Producer on the game, writes in with the following:

        I'm Rob, the Senior Producer on the Jamie Kane game. A couple of people have emailed the BBC asking for an official response to the Jamie Kane/Wikipedia thing. If you guys still have space for it, would you mind adding in the following, as there seems to be some confusion:

        "Just to confirm, the BBC would never use Wikipedia as a marketing tool. The first posting was simply a case of a fan of the game getting into the spirit of alternative reality a little too much. The follow up posting was made by a fan of the game who happens to work for the BBC and was made without the knowledge of anyone in the Jamie Kane Team or BBC Marketing."

Re:No, they didn't

[/dev/trash]

Suuuuuuure.

BBC Stealth Advertisting

[hughbar]

Actually to put on my tinfoil hat, for a moment, I believe that this is part of a pattern and I've complained (without result or reply) about it
http://blog.bigwaveheuristics.com/index.php?p=62
on various occasions.

Thus, the 'irresponsible' post, re-editing, discussion, slashdotting is just a cynical attempt to create buzz. On this occasion, they've succeeded.

Slashdot taken in by the ploy?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, they've got more marketing from BoingBoing, which is now being exposed to all the /. readers. That's smrt.

Abused Wikipedia, Eh?

[NitsujTPU]

Hey, these jerks abused wikipedia, huh? To market their product?

Yeah, lets FP a story with a link to the ad on Slashdot! That will teach them!

See how many visitors you get now! Abusers.

I say good.

[_aa_]

Anyone can modify a Wiki, and anyone who thinks a Wiki is some perfect document free of unsavory influence is a dullard. I would be more concerned if marketing DID NOT find it's way into a Wiki. Look around you. Right above me as I type I am bombarded with logos and ads and OSDN navigation bars (or I would be if they wern't disabled or AdBlocked). Marketing is so much a part of our lives, there would be something wrong with the openness of Wikipedia if marketing did not find it's way inside.

I hate ads as much as the next guy, but you're not going to stop this practice by broadcasting it on /. for every tom, dick, and harry to read. Just mark it for deletion and move on. It appears the BBC didn't really sanction this, but, now that marketers have seen the kind of press this has gotten, they're going to be all over it now. And then it will become ineffective and they'll move on to something else. It won't ruin Wikipedia anymore than subscriptions ruined slashdot.

Foot. Gun. Bang. Ouch.

[Shaper_pmp]

FYI, when you're arguing in favour of impartiality and throw terms like "Zionist" around, it becomes very clear that what you mean by "impartiality" is what we mean by "pushing your own agenda, no matter how fringe or extreme it may be"...

HTH

Thank you.

[solomonrex]

This is the real point. Some sham 'advertising' on wikipedia isn't abuse as much as the one-sided political rants that claim facts from disputed all-too-recent events. At least you'd have to look for this advertising for it to work. But try to find an unbiased recount of recent U.S. elections - and you can't find it on wikipedia. That's why I don't use it. For all that I barely used it, I tried editing to help, and that didn't get accepted either - I was totally outnumbered by liberals.

Since they aren't actually selling this product, there is no accountability to balance their views. Finally, because it relies on community involvement, it's really the worst form of democracy: a popularity contest.

Re:Thank you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unbiased != Your bias
That said I have no idea how (un)biased the articles about US elections are.

Great way to kill Wikipedia

[meethade]

Gee, thanks for getting Wikipedia Slashdott'ed, now I have to resort to actually trying to remember crap. I hate using my brain. :/

Luckily never on /.

[houghi]

Can you imagine that something like this would happen on /.? People just posting a story to get hits to their own website?

Luckily the editors here are paying attention and will never let such a thing happen and if it would happen, that person would NEVER be able to submit a story again.

Viral marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

This viral marketing has been 100% successful. Could BBC wish anything more than to appear on /.?

Phew, I'm glad that ploy didn't succeed

[Rogerborg]

I mean, apart from the massive free surge in eyeballs generated by this Slashdot story, what have they achieved?

Um...

[autopr0n]

What bussness decision was that?

Re:Um...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re your sig.. any chance of Autopr0n ever coming back up? It was looking pretty promising last time I tried it

Anyone actualy sprised by this?

[Frobozz0]

Is anyone actually surprised by this? Wikipedia is a nice resource and all, but it's anything but a defacto standard for information. I understand that institutional encyclopedias are subject to bias, but Wikipedia is subject to wild innaccuracy because of how easy it is to edit it's content in an arbitrary way. Which is worse?

In order to remove potential innacuracy you'd have to have restricted contribution. I'm assuming this is by an editorial staff used to review submissions by the public. So, in the end, how do these editioral people differ from the experts who edit traditional encyclopedias?

Wikipedia and VfD for advertising

[SeanDuggan]

Unfortunately, there's some backlash in that you have a lot of people cruising the Wikipedia pages and putting up for VfD any site which mentions a commercially available product that they're not familiar with. Just look at the VfD for Zillions of Games... Although, in that case, at least Ril was feeling suspicious due to some problems with a frequent contributor to the article also doing link-spamming to it.

And yes, I think the page is significant, although moreso if you're into abstract board game theory, chess variants, or artificial intelligence.

Re:Wikipedia and VfD for advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, there's some backlash in that you have a lot of people cruising the Wikipedia pages and putting up for VfD any site which mentions a commercially available product that they're not familiar with.

Considering the tidal wave of crap flooding Wikipedia, I'd rather the occasional unnecessary VFD than let it just fill up with cruft and adverts.

In other news:

[Tallon29]

Slashdot used for apparent viral marketing ploy.

how about this edit

[Anonymous Coward]

What about
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Collabor ative_fiction&oldid=20874021

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Collabor ative_fiction&oldid=20892712

Funny entry

[wiredlogic]

It would be hilarious if someone wrote up a Wikipedia article on the great BBC marketing campaign of 2005. With links to the existing fictional articles.

GTA San Andreas graffiti

[uofitorn]

A little off topic, but still about Viral Marketing techniques trashing something up.

Has anyone seen those stickers for GTA San Andreas on mailboxes, stop lights, electrical boxes and anywhere else within arm's reach in the downtown area of their city? I work in downtown Chicago, and I can't help but see several of these every day on my commute. Of course, the marketing company hired to put those there is not going to make an effort to later clean them up, further adding to the graffiti and dirtiness of the city.. It's no different than petty vandalism and it makes me angry!

BCC alternating Reality?

[Zx-man]

Let's not forget where the inventor of the "Ministry of Truth" was employed.

BBC Official Response

[TheoMurpse]

As it turns out, the BBC does not condone this, and has written an official response to Boing Boing:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/15/bbc_wikipedia _is_not.html

spelling mistake?

[geoffrobinson]

Did he use 'colour' instead of 'color' or something and thereby out himself as a BBC employee?

Does this surprise anyone?

[Hellboy0101]

What's that? Questionable tactics used by the British media?? Say it isn't so! C'mon folks, didn't anybody see Notting Hill? OMG, I can't believe I just admitted to seeing Notting Hill!!!

Viral what now?

[realityfighter]

For those not into the Alternate Reality scene: While the biggest ARGs (i love bees, Art of the Heist, etc) are ad campaigns, various companies and hobbyists also put them on for fun. There is, in fact, a flourishing indie ARG scene.

As far as I can tell, Jamie Kane is NOT a viral marketing campaign. It's being run by the BBC in a way that seems to be equivalent to a television show. It isn't actually advertising anything (except perhaps the BBC, by which logic everything ever broadcast is advertising.)

Re:Hmm very interesting story, deserves some thoug

[jisatsusha]

it's post like this that make me glad to browse at -1, funniest thing I read all day.

Viral?

[jazman]

What makes it a viral marketing ploy as opposed to a normal (non-viral) marketing ploy? The key feature of a virus is that it can replicate itself, and I don't see how the original article can replicate itself. Covert or one of its many synonyms I could understand, but viral???

How, for example, is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauron NOT a "viral marketing ploy" for New Line Cinemas and/or Tolkien's estate?

Or is the word "viral" simply being misused in a sad attempt to throw confusion over the meaning of Microsoft's "GPL is viral" stuff? Are we now calling everything evil viral?