Wikipedia Scandal: High Profile Users Allegedly Involved In Paid-Editing

An anonymous reader writes "A new Wikipedia scandal: two high profile users, one of them board member of Wikimedia UK seem to have been caught doing edits for personal profit. It was also discovered that they ran an SEO business related to Wikipedia. Quoting: 'Roger Bamkin, trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation UK, whose LinkedIn page describes him as a high-return-earning PR consultant, appeared to be using Wikipedia's main page "Did You Know" feature and the resources of Wikipedia's GLAM WikiProject (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) initiative to pimp his client's project. Bamkin's current client is the country of Gibraltar.'"

Comments

...... so?

[viperidaenz]

Where is the problem?

Re:...... so?

[Anonymous Coward]

Being human. That's the problem. I don't know of any other animal that cheats, lies, steals, and deceives like we do. Whatever happened to just plain ol killing?! Oh...never mind.

Re:...... so?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen one where the some males pretend to be female in order to be able to approach the harem and secretly mate with the females. I also seen apes steeling food and hiding it knowing there will be consequence from past experience. Cheats, lies steal and deceives are what we, animals, do. INB4 man is the only animal that kill for purpose other then eating. Witch is false, larger animal often 'toy' with smaller until they die. eg: Cats. Also mating duel rarely result in death but it is a possibility. Moral of the story; stop comparing ourself to other species as either better or worst.

Re:...... so?

[Anonymous Coward]

You did not downvote that. That was a joke. Female dog...? Sigh. Eh. Slashdot is more angry and less informative than Fark, these days, don't know why I still bother.

Re:...... so?

[Anonymous Coward]

You did not downvote that. That was a joke. Female dog...? Sigh.

Eh. Slashdot is more angry and less informative than Fark, these days, don't know why I still bother.

I wish you reddit fucktards would stop saying 'downvote' here. This isn't reddit. Go back there and drool over silly cat pictures and leave us alone.

Re:...... so?

[Teancum]

Wikipedia airs their dirty laundry in public because of the collaborative nature of the project and general transparency of the discussion forums. Most other similar organizations do this kind of discipline much more in private and certainly not while "deliberations" are going on to decide upon a course of action or even to consider if the issue is relevant and should be addressed.

If that makes the whole process seem like a house of disorder, that is by design. Committees are rarely neat and tidy.

These things happen

[tgeller]

It's not the fault of WP. As long as they toss him out, they've done the right thing and all's well.

If they act like the Catholic Church and protect the abusers, that's another matter.

Re:These things happen

[sortius_nod]

That's not what the parent poster was stating, nice straw man.

Re:These things happen

[TapeCutter]

seriously? That's what you got from the post?

Here's a comprehension clue for you, the GP is not talking about the act itself, he is talking about the morality of someone else covering them up to "protect" the institution. In TFA it was members of WP themselves who blew the whistle and took action, whereas the church has done everything it can to ignore the whistle, blame the victims, and shield the priests from the law. That an encyclopedia has more moral fiber than the Catholic Church should be a concern to everyone.

Incidentally...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Why would you trust anybody who(voluntarily no less) describes themselves as an 'SEO Consultant?

Surely such people would be as laboriously excluded from polite company as their abominable creations are from search indices and email queues?

These things happen

[gweihir]

Identify the cretins, remove them, shame them publicly and move on. Does not invalidate Wikipedia or its approach at all.