The Rise of Paid Wikipedia Consulting

jfruh writes "Roger Bamkin is a director at Wikimedia UK; he also is on retainer for the government of the British territory of Gibraltar, and has nominated and approved Gibraltar-related articles for the "Did You Know" box on the Wikipedia front page. Maximilian Klein runs a business called UntrikiWiki, and advertises his services by saying "A positive Wikipedia article is invaluable SEO." Are such users violating the spirit of what Wikipedia is about? Or should we trust that the wisdom of crowds will offset obvious shilling?"

Comments

Do you think

[kiriath]

That this is the first time in history you have been able to pay to have the 'history books' 'doctored'?

Re:Do you think

[Cryacin]

I'm sure that Encyclopedia Britanica has an "alter encyclopedia entry" item in their shopping cart too.

I don't think it's so much that this is the first time in history that history can be bought. It's probably more of a discussion on the price.

I have been paid to write articles.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been paid to write articles and pitch them to many magazines just to create published sources that are then used to force wikipedia articles in a certain direction with sources. Specifically, I wrote about Quantum Fiction (which has a crazy misogynist edit history) and my article is getting published in a real magazine, at the end of this week. As soon as it appears, it will be used to further the edit war on the Quantum Fiction page.

Dupe?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/09/19/0414235/wikipedia-scandal-high-profile-users-allegedly-involved-in-paid-editing

Re:Dupe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lies!!! Look at what it says on Wikipedia!

Samzenpus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. Please help to establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources about the topic. If notability cannot be established, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. (September 2012)

samzenpus is a well-respected Slashdot editor. He is renowned for his careful editing and focus on quality control. [citation needed]

This biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Re:hahaha

[kelemvor4]

Wikipedia: for editors with no life and paid shills. I'll stick to Encyclopedia Britannica thank you very much.

Because Britannica has more content than the world's largest encyclopedia and you can be certain nobody is paying them, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_comparisons

Re:It'll just be a rip off

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we assuming that someone being paid to author something well, or clean up articles, must necessarily be in the business of lying?

It's entirely possible that the guy just gets paid to know what will and won't likely be removed. He'd know you have to cite sources, and can't just make shit up. He knows that garbage is going to get removed and the remaining edits will be suspect. He can also probably put together a readable sentence.

So, so long as they're working within the framework of rules... I don't see a problem at all. If they become a problem, it'll get dealt with.

"Wisdom of crowds"

[Arancaytar]

Possibly used to apply to Wikipedia 6 or 7 years ago. Then its rise in popularity caused trolling and political shilling to become more attractive, libel lawsuits for living person biographies to become a danger, and an increasing obsession with "notability" (ie. having spawned at least one internet meme) to develop. Preventing the former and enforcing the latter required a tight and locked down command structure. Any moderately popular article is locked to anonymous edits now.

That means Wikipedia is no longer dependent on the wisdom of crowds, but the incorruptibility of its management and directorial staff.

Whoops.