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

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.

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.

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:And on slashdot

[Ihlosi]

Yes !

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

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.

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:Hmm

[Breakfast Pants]

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

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.

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? ;-)