Wikipedia Actively Battling PR Sockpuppets

Nerval's Lobster writes "Over the weekend we discussed news that PR firms have been selling their ability to modify Wikipedia entries to help clients clean up their image. Now, the Wikimedia Foundation's executive director has confirmed that Wikipedia editors are actively engaged in a wide-ranging battle against those PR firms. Over the past couple weeks, those editors have isolated several hundred user accounts linked to people 'paid to write articles on Wikipedia promoting organizations or products,' according to Sue Gardner. Those users' accounts violate Wikipedia's guidelines, 'including prohibitions against sockpuppetry and undisclosed conflicts of interest.' Some 250 suspicious user accounts have already been nuked. Correcting biased text is a thankless job for those Wikipedia editors — the literary-world equivalent of killing endless hordes of zombies approaching your protective fence. But that job gets even harder when a PR agency deploys dozens, or even hundreds of writers to systematically adjust clients' Wikipedia pages."

Comments

Re:Wikipedia is an MMO

[FatdogHaiku]

That's funny. When I went to the Wikipedia page about Wikipedia it said it was "The happiest place on Earth." Clearly these PR companies aren't having an impact on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is pubic hair adjacent?
Disneyland made the same bogus claim in July of 1955... some judge should have at least forced them to put appropriate landscaping around the front entrance...