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How PR Subverts Wikipedia
Daniel_Stuckey writes "We all know that Wikipedia can be subverted—it’s an inevitability of an open platform that some people will seek to abuse it, whether to gain some advantage or just for a laugh. Fortunately, the Wikipedia community has strong mechanisms in place to deal with this, from the famous cry of [citation needed] to the rigorous checks and standards put in place by its hierarchy of editors and admins. In recent months though, Insiders have encountered something altogether more worrying: a concerted attack on the very fabric of Wikipedia by PR companies that have subverted the online encyclopedia's editing hierarchy to alter articles on a massive scale—perhaps tens of thousands of them. Wikipedia is the world's most popular source of cultural, historical, and scientific knowledge—if their fears are correct, its all-important credibility could be on the line... Adam Masonbrink, a founder and Vice-President of Sales at Wiki-PR, boasts of new clients including Priceline and Viacom. Viacom didn't respond ... but Priceline — a NASDAQ listed firm with over 5,000 employees and William Shatner as their official spokesman — did. Sadly, Priceline didn't choose to respond to us via Captain Kirk; instead Leslie Cafferty, vice president of corporate communications and public relations, admitted, 'We are using them to help us get all of our brands a presence because I don't have the resources internally to otherwise manage.'"
If the internet organized itself with a sort of government and had votes and such on laws and such governing it, this wouldn't be a problem. The problem is that the internet needs representation, but all it has is our shitty bricks and mortar governments, and organizations like ICANT (cough, giggle), running the show.
We used to deal with shit like this with things like the Usenet Death Penalty. We simply boot the companies off the internet. Suddenly, ethics and morality abounded. Nope... you can't blame the PR companies for this: You have to blame our fucktard governments (all of them, equally) for being utterly and completely incompetent.
We should hold an Internet Congress, elect some people, and start cleaning shit like this up, instead of waiting until the heat death of the universe for the governments of the world to advance in maturity past the age of five.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
So how exactly is it bad for priceline to be getting all of their brands a wiki page? And, if they have relevant sources, why not add them to other websites? If it's incorrect, malicious or deliberately misleading info, that's fine, but that's not what I'm seeing from them.
Capitalism! Freedom of the press belongs to he who owns one!
This problem will only be solved after the workers have expropriated the bourgeoisie and established their proletarian dictatorship!
UNITE with the Campaign for a Free Internet because today, our future begins with tomorrow!
Shatner's persona of The Negotiator is not Captain Kirk, and Priceline have never used Kirk as a spokesman.
Fortunately, the Wikipedia community has strong mechanisms in place to deal with this, from the famous cry of [citation needed] to the rigorous checks and standards put in place by its hierarchy of editors and admins.
[citation needed]
Just read the bios of a lot C/D-listers. Longer and more detailed than the leads of respective TV Shows/movies, and it's their first gig. We do learn that they were Romeo (or Juliet) in high school, though. It's a PR company.
Not sure that this is really new. The page for C++, for example, is regularly scrubbed of any critical material. At the moment, there is just one negative sentence, indicating that "C++ is sometimes compared unfavorably to [some other languages]". Whether that is an unbiased and appropriately detailed statement of the totality of current objective C++ criticism is left as an exercise for the reader.
There is no point placing any stock in [citation needed]; these are PR companies. If someone challenges what they are adding to wikipedia with citation requests they will issue a press release, get questionable "newspapers" (i.e. trade papers, promotional puff periodicals etc.) to pick up the press release (normally it is verbatim) and then back slam that on the wikipedia text as a citation. A lovely circular piece of work that ensures the promotion continues.
One way to minimise their PR efforts is to create significant Streisand effects on their work. But some PR companies are so desperate that they would probably even be delighted with that.
What these companies do is serially violate Wikipedia policies while padding with fluff or outright lies. I'm not against paid editing itself, and a few people do it without problems, but the more known companies have methods they use are purely deceptive and they cause a great deal of expense and problems because of the thousands of sockpuppets they create, and the hit and run methods. They are not doing this in an open and honest way, whatsoever.
Trust me. If I know anything, this I know, and I know it first hand from actually working the SPI cases.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
https://www.wiki-pr.com/services/
The most outrageous part of this is that Wiki-PR claims to have Wikipedia admins on their staff, not just normal editors. There is one, and only one response to this - find out who they are and remove their admin status immediately.
Als, some excerpts, as this stuff has to be seen to be believed:
"We respect the community and its rules against promoting and advertising." - Claims the advertising agency whose following services completely revolve around image management and promotion of corporate interests.
"Don't get caught in a PR debacle by editing your own page." - As if having an advertising firm editing it for you through a network of paid-for eds/admins looks any less corrupt and underhanded.
"We've built technology to manage your page 24 hours a day, 365 days a year." - Blatantly working against the Wikipedia rule against asserting page ownership.
"That means you need not worry about anyone tarnishing your image - be it personal, political, or corporate." - Possibly the worst admission, goodbye balanced articles, goodbye controversy sections, hello censorship and whitewashed articles.
Though the abuse of an open platform for informing the public is to be expected, what is surprising is how blatantly these people are advertising their corruption of Wikipedia.
Someone in Washington DC recently edited Ed Snowden's Wikipedia entry, and changed it to call him a "traitor", as opposed to a "leaker" or "whistleblower". RT has the story: http://rt.com/usa/snowden-wikipedia-senate-traitor-116/
why we're supposed to keep sending money to Wikipedia in order to to prevent it from becoming an advertisement platform.
Any information in Wikipedia always needs to be checked against a creditable source. Its always been known that information in Wikipedia is open to bias and misinformation. How is this news?
This article is more about a crappy PR firm claiming to write articles for you (but which usually get deleted). If you want bad, look at anything involving Monsanto. Looks like they have a bunch of people changing their articles and using them to attack critics. Hey, I actually got (accidently) involved in the Morning277 case mentioned in the article. Closest to newsworthy for me in a while. All the articles involved use the same 3 sites, designed to use names that look credible.
As a long time marketer I can assure you that we ruin everything. email spam, ugly banner ads, interstitials, SEO manipulation, retargeting, on and on. We do it because it works. Even paid twitter followers work. Robocalls work. Blatant sex works (works really well). When Congress gets involved all that happens is we have to pay lobbyists to make sure we can get around any laws or regulations. When we find ways to make you aware of our clients or their products, when we find ways to make you like us, when we find ways to make you engage with us, even if the response is a very low percent, we will do it.
Stop me before I annoy you again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki-PR
"this article may meet Wikipedia's criteria for speedy deletion"
Lets all make an effort to not only keep the Wiki-PR article, but to include any *FACTS* we find that show what Adam is up to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing_on_Wikipedia
You really need to see who it is trying to get the articles changed, some of the biggest criminals around.
Adam "anything for a dollar" Masonbrink
“We write it. We manage it. You never worry about Wikipedia again.“
Really?
What were they worried about the truth?
So Adam wants to cash in on subverting one of greatest assets on the Inet.
Show him how you feel about that.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I couldn't really care less about the company PR.
The same shit happens with basement virgins who doggedly guard their precious articles even if they aren't related to corporations. The pendulum swings both ways, but obviously more towards the paid interests.
My real beefs with wikipedia are these: people who argue about stovetop vs. hob and people who need to write portmanteau in every 3rd article.
Please sit down on a railway before an oncoming train. Please and thanks.
Why not have the vendor write about their product as though it was a scientific experiment. With such things, "Best In Class" edited out; instead identification of what class the product is in. One could refer to it as the "Star Trek's Vulcan Test", if its logical, and unemotional, editing passes. It won't stop the grinning show offs, but it will cause them to stay on topic.
A possible idea is that modifiers not be allowed. Another test is that schematics have to be downloadable for third party verification. Given todays lawful upholdings of copywrites, trade marks, licences, and patents; this shouldn't be a problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-10-09/News_and_notes
As one disgruntled Wiki-PR employee is reported as writing: "The warning flag was when I was told not to mention Elance or work for hire." Those who work for Wiki-PR have indeed gone to extensive lengths to hide their activities on Wikipedia. This has included altering their habitual behavioral patterns, frequently changing their IP addresses (apparently to avoid being caught by the "checkuser" tool), and bypassing the normal gatekeeping process by which editors police new submissions to the English Wikipedia. One practice appears to exploit a loophole by creating a new page as a user subpage before moving it into the mainspace, where Wikipedia's regular articles are located. This "bug" was actually first reported in 2007 with the prescient warning: "creating articles in userspace before moving them into mainspace seems to me a sneaky way of avoiding scrutiny from newpage patrollers." Checkuser has also been sidestepped through the company's use of remote and freelance employees, who can operate from a large number of IP ranges.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Get the MPAA/RIAA/etc. mad at you, that's how.
Sigh.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
How about if you turn your corporate web site into a public Wiki just like Wikipedia? We'd love to help you improve your corporate image.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
I agree with this post entirely. I first noticed this several years back, when I was researching the background of faux historian (frequently appears on PBS's non-news hour), Michael Beschloss' wife,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afsaneh_Mashayekhi_Beschloss
Note that nowhere in the entry does it mention that Mrs. Beschloss was a former employee of the Carlyle Group (which in point of fact she was).
I became suspicious about this and noticed an extraordinary number of former Carlyle Groupers had excised that from their background and history. Most peculiar . . . .
When you say "rigorous.....
Wiki-PR conducting "a concerted attack" on Wikipedia, October 16, 2013.
Extensive network of clandestine paid advocacy exposed, October 9, 2013.
Q&A on Public Relations and Wikipedia, September 25, 2013.
Automatic detection of "infiltrating" Wikipedia admins; Wiki, or 'pedia?, September 25, 2013.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Wikipedia needs to embrace that companies want to get their products on a website with that much traffic - AND they want to control the content. I have been asked by my employer to get products/services/brands on wikipedia and I have experienced the annoying editors taking down items because it was on a copyrighted web page or source, or stating it was advertising, or other things. I even tried to be partial (maybe that's just impossible). I get it; they don't want blatant marketing drivel on a fact based site.
Embrace it or lock down who gets to modify your site. Locking down modification would be the worst thing wikipedia could do. So give employers a section or specially flagged pages that they can put whatever they want on it. Hell, charge for it and get rid of those banners begging for money.
Maybe at some point they can move on to extend, and then...
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Did anyone bother to read the article? Don't bother, it's shite. It consists entirely of supposition and equivocation.
Only one actual example is offered, and this example demonstrates the company in question is utterly incapable of controlling the process, the article in question was quickly removed and remains deleted.
The rest is entirely arm-waving about the "scale of the problem" and "perhaps tens of thousands of articles" being involved. Various quotes from uninvolved people who's opinions add nothing of substance, and then a laughable comment from the Wikimedia Foundation that effectively says "not our problem" because it isn't.
Terrible, terrible writing.
This is nothing.
The Croatian Wikipedia (hr.wikipedia.org) is under COMPLETE CONTROLL of far-right ultra-nationalists and historical revisionists.
It's terrible and embarassing not only for Croatia BUT FOR ENTIRE WIKIPEDIA TOO.
Wikipedia can easily solve the problems caused by PR firms like WikiPR. All they need to do is create and/or edit the wikipedia page for WikiPR to just "A shameless fraudulent company who claims to be able to control your company's image on wikipedia, but can't even control their own." Lock the entry, then publicize it.
Game over.
Not even close. Wikipedia is a decent starting place to see if you are even in the ball park regarding things but a credible, citable source, not in my book, nor in the eyes of any instructor I've ever dealt with. As a possible solution, articles that have been touched by a PR firm should be marked as such and flagged as potentially unreliable. I honestly think that Wikipedia should be treated as an encyclopedia and NOT contain any entries to companies, corporations or services beyond a reference to a site that the entity maintains themselves, and if said entity attempts to alter such an entry they should be locked down and IDENTIFIED as bad-wiki citizen.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Negative publicity can take it from there.
Facts are malleable, statistics are... -- well you've heard
that one before I'm sure.
It's not just the PR companies... there are many people who just hover over a topic and make sure the topic reflects their viewpoint, regardless of whether their viewpoint is substantiated. That's why I stopped contributing to Wikipedia, I've had edits (complete with citations) reversed with no given reason other than the hoverer did not like the tense of a verb I used.
This is why the people who care about openness, truth, and freedom for ordinary citizens, and who shun censorship and manipulation of opinions need to start using the weapons of the oppressors against them. The consolidation of masses of personal data from facebook and other sources is becoming a powerful weapon of oppression. But what is to stop the consolidation of known data on the oppressors? As centralised entities they are fundamentally constrained in how they hide their identities (at, least until 'chinese water army' tactics start to become commonplace). I envisage a giant NSA-like graph search like tool, where feeding it an IP address will give you a listing of past activity and suspected links to governments, corporations, and known spies and shills.
Wikipedia needs to embrace that companies want to get their products on a website with that much traffic
No we don't. It's one of the most successful web sites on the planet, and arguably the most successful example of collaboration in human history. Why would we possibly want to change that?
Exactly. It really annoys parts of Corporate America that they can't get their way on Wikipedia. That's a good thing.
I've encountered paid editing a few times. Carnival Cruises really, really wanted to make all the references to their various disasters (the Costa Concordia sinking, the Costa Allegra fire, the Carnivale Tropicale fire, the Carnival Splendor fire, the Carnival Triumph fire (ship adrift for four days), etc.) go away. Big editing battles. Finally the paid editors were kicked off.
There are a few individuals with promotional editors for their own bio articles. Michael Milken, the "Junk Bond King" who did time in a Federal pen, tried very hard to keep himself from being labelled as an ex-con. Nassim Nicholas Taleb has had people trying to keep the poor financial results of his hedge fund out of the article. Vivek Wadwa, who's heavily into self-promotion, put his grad students on pumping up his reputation, and seems to have an in with Jimbo Wales. It's an ongoing headache, but usually the good guys win.
the subnet but the entire network
How do you get rid of the scum and still keep it an open system?
I don't think it's even possible.
As an example, there's one guy who has been stalking a TV and movie producer for almost twenty years.
Why?
Because the producer became extremely successful and admired, even a household name for a time, while the stalker achieved nothing.
So he dedicated the entirety of what passes for his life to endlessly badmouthing the producer and trolling on every forum he can find.
Wikipedia has repeatedly banned him and his various accounts, but the relentless obsession is just too much to overcome: He always returns in some new guise or other, until that's banned and he creates another.
These are the kind of people who will always defeat every good intention.
They have nothing better to do.
Wikipedia has been broken for a long time.
Real facts or scandals involving popular people (RMS, Steve Jobs, etc) are routinely stripped from the pages because fanboys are allowed to have the final say in what is and isn't allowed.
Pages end up being incredibly biased
Only companies? Hardly.
We have cliques of wiki editors who have agendas, we have non corporate organizations with agendas, we have internet groups of like minded people who make sure their viewpoints are the only accepted truth, etc. Wikipedia is slanted with the common viewpoints, not the historically or factually correct in many articles.
The wikipedia rules are ignored when the editors disagree and enforced when a counterpoint they want to limit, its the standard attack method.
My favorite was the common belief that in the Vietnam war there was no Canadian military. It was contested with a Canadian Military government webpage that listed medals earned in Vietnam during the war. It was still removed and banned. The historian had so many of his viewpoints over turned, he ended up only writing articles in his personal page.
The "group think" is so strongly promoted on wikipedia, that its basically re-writing our history so the popularly viewpoints are the accepted viewpoints.
Credibility has always been an issue with rampant viewpoint moderation.
I have yet to read a single reliable source that says there is no internet for the dead, whether it's in the afterlife, the undead-life, the reincarnated life, etc. etc.
If the Hindus are right about reincarnation, I think we can safely say that death/rebirth doesn't get you perma-banned from the Internet.
Both political parties have professionals that create and maintain pages on politicians down to very low levels. They frequently reverse unfavorable edits. Try it sometime.
This is so very wrong. The rigorous checks are non existent; for three years a WP FA boldly stated that Richard II was king of England in 1345 (22 years before he was born); other articles state that Edward III divide England up amongst his sons. Palpable nonsense is everywhere and mostly goes unchecked. Did any of Qworty's revenge edits get checked, no they did not, and now that everyone knows that he was engaged in a massive amount of falsification on the site has anything been done to fix it? No it hasn't. Jagged85 100,000+ edits in History, Mathematics, Literature, Philosophy, Medicine loads of which were found to be a falsification of source. There are still 1000s of articles unchecked.
its all-important credibility could be on the line.
I left Wikipedia several years ago when it became rather obvious that some editors were no longer single individuals, but organizations. Take a look at User:Dahn, who edited 20 hours a day for weeks (serious editing, not bot-like stuff). This happened just after a pro-transnistrian (pro-russian) infiltration was discovered, etc. Wikipedia is now too big for individual editors to be able to bring their contribution without hassle.
Wikipedia is by its very policy a hear-say sight. For people to understand this and note the Wikipedia disclaimer, there is no need to think of questioning its credibility.
For its not up to Wikipedia to be credible but of the sources they perform hear-say on.
To say Wikipedia is failing in credibility is really only an indication of the credibility of its many editors choice of sources........ is as close as it gets to attaching Credibility issues to Wikipedia.
Ultimately its the credibility of the sources which most certainly include Main Stream Media. And we should all know by now, those are not reliable, trustworthy sources.
and hold strong to your chair not to fall from it while you are laughing. There is German imperialism, "Soviet-Russian" imperialism. But no, UK is not there. Rule, Britannia..
Wikipedia is bad and you should feel bad for using it for anything other than looking at the sources. Don't read wiki page unless you're in a rush to verify "what" something is, as opposed to actually learn or research the topic.
I've had a hate for wikipedia ever since it became deletionist with "not notable" , and quite honestly these Wiki-PR people are right, "anyone" can edit it, but just because anyone can, doesn't mean they will. I manage 200 "brands" or so and every single one of these would be considered "not notable" to wikipedia because they don't consider any comics from Marvel or DC to be notable unless a film or anime was also made.
This should come as a surprise to nobody. It's a long well-known fact that the majority of the top editors at Wikipedia are paid to do so. Normal people can't compete with someone who's paid full-time to edit Wikipedia and this is the reason it can't be trusted - not even a little bit. And PR-Agencies aren't really the biggest problem - government employees are. Why do you think that Wikipedia is parroting the government line on all subjects where the government is presenting untruthful information through the mainstream media? Because Wikipedia is edited and administrated by the same people who write the government propaganda press releases for the mainstream media, that's why. Do your own research and thinking. You'll be amazed.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Would be a better name. This is just on a large scale what has been going on on a small scale. My wife, who's a college professor, tells her students that if you cite Wikipedia as a source it's like telling me you saw it written on a bathroom wall somewhere.