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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]
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.
why we're supposed to keep sending money to Wikipedia in order to to prevent it from becoming an advertisement platform.
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."
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 . . . .
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.
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.
> 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?
Don't take Madison Avenue money.
Even with its own segregated advertising section, the leverage that marketers will gain over Wikipedia management will become irresistible. Its the camel's nose under the tent. Demands from the money source will increase to merge the real content with phony article-formatted ads. Do it or else the money will stop.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
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.
I've used Google translate to watch the latest 50 entries but I couldn't see any outright problems. Although I'm pretty sure it's likely you're right, one or two examples would really help in this case.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
The Croatian Wikipedia (hr.wikipedia.org) is under COMPLETE CONTROLL of far-right ultra-nationalists and historical revisionists.
You mean it's mostly edited by Croats?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
That doesn't work unless you become overly dependent on a single source. I'll admit that it has it's dangers, but it's not inherently fatal. But you might only want to take money for companies advertising their own product rather than from an ad agency. (And make sure early on, like from the start, that nobody has any exclusive right, and also that anything deemed false can be removed. And have the contract [a standard contract for everyone] written by a very good lawyer...who is working for you.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
Why? Because *I* could be monetizing it and getting rich! That's the only thing that really matters, after all...
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
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.
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.
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.
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..
What? from the wiki..."Although imperialist practices have existed for thousands of years, the term "Age of Imperialism" generally refers to the activities of nations such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States in the early 18th through the middle 20th centuries".
I did a quick count: 14 other references to Brit.
I'm laughing.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
I on the other hand use it constantly. All about the Dinosaur I just read about. A baseball players career. Comparitive stats of a B-17 and a Lancaster.
I take it w/ a grain of salt when looking up something that could be controversial or self-serving in some manner. Mostly I don't use the wiki for that kind of thing.
But for the other kind of thing, I love it.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain