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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.'"
If you remember DMOZ, the community edited links directory, that died a death because they didn't tackle paid interests.
I'd edit a category to remove keyword stuffing, and kill links to sites that were simply keyword stuffed pages with lots of links to another site. Obvious SEO stuff. As soon as I did that, a senior editor would drop buy, re-instate the links, and in coordination, the spammy gateway page would be replaced by a plausible site. After 2-3 months, the site would revert back to the spammy gateway page again.
Of course the senior editors were linked to those sites, and that's why there was such close co-ordination, but there was nothing you could do about it. DMOZ did nothing to fix it, and people just stopped caring, it went away.
GLAM wasn't created by normal Wikipedia editors. It was something the foundation made up to draw in people who don't really give a shit about open source type ideals.
It's not really a surprise that it would end this way.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Why would someone who has no vested interest in the page do any work on improving it?
Have a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I think it is incredibly slimy when Jimmy Wales' personal user talk page is made into a policy discussion forum.... as if Jimmy Wales has any real authority on Wikipedia any more. His talk page tends to be the last bastion of the trolls who aren't getting their way in other places and think that somehow Wales will bless their viewpoint and take action on something.
My experience when Jimmy Wales actually does something is that it is usually violating existing policies and often acts first and explains later... if ever. There are enough Wales fanbois to follow behind that the policies often change to rationalize the actions. Rarely the community pushes back, especially on English Wikipedia itself. The non-English projects seem to avoid that kind of cult-like following, so I think it is something unique to mostly en.wikipedia. On the other hand, when he weighs in on a controversial topic in the regular community forums by talking first and mostly leaving the actual implementation of the idea to others, his input is usually much more appreciated and considerably less damaging.
Back when Jimmy Wales actually owned the server farm running Wikipedia and the developers running that server farm were on his personal payroll, it might have made some sense to give him a little bit of extra authority on getting things done. That hasn't been the case for many years yet somehow the notion that he is "in charge" persists.
Sure, I had a low view of Mr Wales, but I gained a lot of respect when he played such a major role in the SOPA blackout. If it weren't for him, and the bold step of blacking out Wikipedia, I'm not sure the blackout would have even been an event.