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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.'"
Where is the problem?
Gibralta is a region just north of Africa that is under British rule and all the inhabitants are perfectly happy with this state of affairs
As FUBAR as wiki is I don't see how it can possibly matter.
As an aside, there is data concerning impact craters that is no longer correct, I tried to edit the entry for the Moon and Mars; the hoops one has to go through made the entire process less than worthwhile.
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.
Tom Geller
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.
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?
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.
So who wants to write the Wikipedia article on this scandal?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
And what about the children?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
I use Wiki nominally so i don't care about this situation. I am personally not surprised about this because when it (the site) first popped up years ago i thought to myself "what's to keep someone who's pissed off at you putting up whatever they want about you?".
Think about it.
I did, and updated the article about you accordingly.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I knew Gibraltar couldn't be trusted.
Just end all those "did you know", "in the news", "on this day", and "today's featured article" stuff - not only because they can potentially cause corruption (as maybe in this case) but mostly because they may be relevant for a "knowledge portal" but irrelevant for an -strict- encyclopedia.
It really ????
Mua ban oto
I don't want to deal with misinformed people.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Identify the cretins, remove them, shame them publicly and move on. Does not invalidate Wikipedia or its approach at all.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
Gibraltar is not a country, it is a British overseas territory.
I did that to win a fake argument and poke fun with someone once. This was a while ago when Wikipedia was newish and I was messing with someone who I know claimed that everything on Wikipedia was 100% correct. He was learning about networking and I tried to convince him that the E in cat5e stood for elevated, it was the cables you used to run above the ceiling tiles. He insisted I was wrong and demanded I checked the Wikipedia entry. I had a friend change the entry while we were arguing about it and not only did he edit it to say that cat 5e stood for the "elephant- because it never forgets" standard, but added that anyone listening to (his first name) would be wrong in any explanation by default.
You should have seen the look on his face when he looked it up to prove me wrong seconds later in front of 4 or 5 of us. Priceless.
Sounds like an Onion story... I didn't RTFA though.
Actually Jimmy takes no salary from the Wikimedia Foundation and doesn't even ask for expenses to be covered. He could have easily exploited Wikipedia's popularity to become a billionaire, but chose not to. Instead he just gets to be the butt of stupid jokes like this one from people who have no idea what they're talking about.
It's incredible how so many corrupt, self-absorbed people can make such a nice thing as Wikipedia.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There is no such thing as "Wikimedia Foundation UK". There is "Wikimedia UK" (officially "Wiki UK limited"). The Wikimedia Foundation is a US-based organization that runs the servers that host Wikipedia and handles the associated administrative and financial matters. Wikimedia UK is just a local users' organization, also known as a "chapter".
By writing "Wikimedia Foundation UK", the article writer seemed to imply that Roger Bamkin was a powerful person regarding the management of Wikipedia / Wikimedia sites. This is not the case.
Thanks. That page on Altruism was wrong though, so I improved it for you.
This is just human nature.
And that is what we call reductionism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism
Actually Jimmy takes no salary from the Wikimedia Foundation and doesn't even ask for expenses to be covered. He could have easily exploited Wikipedia's popularity to become a billionaire, but chose not to. Instead he just gets to be the butt of stupid jokes like this one from people who have no idea what they're talking about.
he's found a better way than salary.
"The way Mr. Wales makes a living is by getting $50,000 to $70,000 per speaking engagement when he goes and lectures about Wikipedia.[6][7][8][9]."
he's burning through 21k/month from money ultimately derived from the bizniz, not bad.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I for one am shocked!
wkipedia is an oligarchy full of trolls, gamers, bureaucrats and shills... has been for ages
anyone who thinks of wikipedia in the same light as britannica or world book is a moron
wikipedia is full of interesting stuff, but it should never be relied on as a reliable source
1. Extremely expensive speaking engagements. Standard way to buy favors of politicians.
2. Wikia. Wikipedia is so deletionist as it is because if content is driven over to Wikia, Jimbo can make a profit of it with his giant Smurf ads.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Wikia is not owned or doesn't have any connection to Jimmy Wales...
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That's like saying the country of Guam, or the country of Puerto Rico. Gibraltar is a territory. Its inhabitants are British.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Differing sets of conflicting rules, senior editors making their own personal information kingdoms, colliding and sometimes colluding with people who think they're editing UrbanDictionary.
I only edit anonymously, and I do not talk to any other editors.
There is no "country of Gilbraltar" as the anonymous coward who posted the article suggests. It is a British overseas territory. It's something akin to Guam or American Samoa which are territories of the USA and nobody thinks they are countries.
It was erased because it was not a suitable "TIL" submission.
Rule I is "Submissions must be verifiable", which was not the case. The only mention was a random blog that claimed that he tried threatening Wikipedia. Instead, it got remvoed as part of a regular deletion process.
Rule V: "No misleading claims". If lawyers were involved, there would be a record in WP:OFFICE, along with other discussion outside the regular deletion process. An example of a billionare-class entity badgering Wikipedia can be found on the Lava lamp page.
The archive version reads as a simple press release, and is not suitable as a wikipedia article (dead references, referenced don't match article content, etc.)
In other words, pics of those legal threats or they didn't happen.
Obviously Wikipedia would be better served if Jimbo lived the life of a pauper and died penniless in the streets.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
It still seems to me to be arbitrary decisions.
Rule 1: The submission linked to a Village Voice editorial which itself linked to the original story which itself linked to court records. The allegations in the story may or may not be true, but I have read many other submissions with less verifiable support.
Rule V: The claim was that Wikipedia deleted a page. Wikipedia did indeed delete the page. Why it deleted the page was the subject of the discussion.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
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.
Why would someone who has no vested interest in the page do any work on improving it?
Are you making a joke? How do you think Wikipedia came to exist?
That's why I don't want more and more horribly misinformed people.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Does this mean that you concede the argument, or is it some kind of bizarre demand to consider all arguments unimportant if they happen on the Internet?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
He was already rich when he started Wikipedia.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Wrong, and wrong. It's Wikia, Inc, a privately owned for profit enterprise. It was founded by Jimmy Wales (and Angela Beelsley, another Wikipedia bigwig), I'd call that a pretty big connection. They still own it as far as I know.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Ok then, I just looked on the wikia site at the "about us" and nothing came up... Pretty sneak I guess.
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