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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."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_an_MMORPG
Thank you!
A local newspaper owner runs ads for prostitutes in his magazine. He also has a site (backpage.com) that has been accused by a local DA of being a conduit for child prostitution. An edit was made last week talking about this.
Page in question.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dan_Pulcrano&action=history
Talk page with links to articles backing up the edit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dan_Pulcrano
Reliable sources
Change.org petition http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-providing-the-means-to-sell-girls-and-boys-for-sex
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/05/22/san-jose-weekly-paper-pressured-to-remove-escort-service-ads
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Weekly-Paper-Under-Fire-Over-Adult-Ads.html
http://meyerweed.blogspot.com/2013/08/san-jose-inside-vs-integrity.html
http://www.protectsanjose.com/content/sjpoa-presdient-unland-responds-metro-editor
Skeezy.
Is there anything at all that advertising and marketing firms can't turn to shit? Anything?
I say name 'em and shame 'em. Where is a list of companies and people that have hired a PR firm to manage Wikipedia articles? Once I know, I'll never deal with them.
To show there is nothing new under the sun...ironically from the wikipedia entry "On January 24, 2007, Rick Jelliffe made claim on his blog that a Microsoft employee offered to pay him to make corrections in Wikipedia articles concerning Office Open XML" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
If they are intentionally editing the site to delete factual information or add fake information. Couldn't the constitute vandalism which they operators of Wikipedia could sue them for? Especially since they are doing it "For Profit" so they can't say they did so erroneously or anything?
Watch them get hit with a steep judgement against them PER ATTEMPTED EDIT and you will see them put a stop to it fairly quit I would think.
To speculate - I've noticed that articles on wikipedia fall into the three broad categories, unsurpisingly the same as those of nouns: 1) people, 2) places, 3) things.
3) "Things" articles are the 'simplest' to disentangle or find the truth of because "things" include works of art, mathematics, science and physical objects. It's easy to tell a lie when an article says that the hit song, "I feel good" is written by Mozart, or when an article claims gravity makes things fall up. These claims are relatively easy to test or refute. The problem with these types of articles is they may require some real expertise (especially philosophical and mathematical articles) to verify - but that is also their virtue
2) "Places" articles (which include 'historical events') become more difficult because often these places do not exist any more, or the events usually have already happened, usually a really long time ago. These articles suffer the classic problems of history multiplied by the power of the internet.
1) "People" articles. These articles are rife with arguments over what actions events in a person's life are significant, and what elements of those actions are significant. The words chosen to describe a person can make all the difference - he was a "Great Leader" or he was a "Good Leader" - which one best describes Hitler*?
So I would venture that this firm has targeted articles in categories 1 and 2, although I guess there maybe product articles in category 3 which could be gainfully modified.
Ah the truth of things. And the relative truth of places and people ;)
*you graciously forgive this overused example.
Some of the paid PR I've seen recently has been on biographies of living persons, especially rich ones. Lots of happy talk about their charitable work and affiliations gets put in. Stuff about their career failures, lawsuits, and criminal history gets taken out. This is tougher to fight, because Wikipedia has a "biography of living persons" policy which discourages negative comments for anything short of a felony conviction. (Even after a felony conviction, sometimes.)
On the product and business side, though, pushing back against paid editing usually works.
People are more concerned with whether or not they are to be caught and less with whether or not it's the right thing to do. These bits and pieces of character should be coming from parents and school and society at large. I got lots of that sense growing up. I teach those lessons to my sons. I think for most people, however, those lessons never made it in and they are people of lesser character because of it. It makes me sad. None of those people even care that they are of weak and/or poor character. They care little about what they do to society, to culture, to their neighbors or just about anything that doesn't have a direct impact on their lives. I could ask "why" all day long and never get an answer that could lead to a solution. But I think since the 80s and attitude changes such as "looking out for number one" have managed to shift things in a bad and irreversable way. Am I wrong? Does anyone else here see things wrong and try to correct them when they see them? Or do you, like so many others say "it's not my business" and move on? You live in this world. Make it better if you can.
We all know how StackOverflow works. You can always ask or answer a question, but other privileges are based on your reputation. Reputation is only gained by creating good questions and answers. It takes work to get a good reputation on StackOverflow.
I actually don't know what Wikimedia has in place, but it could implement a similar reputation based approach as StackOverflow. Of course the algorithm and mechanism would be different since Wikipedia is not a Q&A site.
To make things even harder, they could implement a reputation killer. For example: if user A improved the score of user B, then user B gets nuked because they are one of these PR firms, then user A should suffer a major reputation dive.
While I'm at it... Instead of Wikipedia begging for money once a year, they could implement a wikipedia.com site which has some light advertising. By default all users go to wikipedia.org, but for those who want can manually redirect to wikipedia.com. I would be glad to support such a system.
Pharmaceutical shills pushing dangerous "standard" medicines is a huge problem. I ran into an outside Vioxx lawyer with COI and a lot of "company loyalty". Pretty tough sledding to set it straight. Worse are the Quackwatch trolls. These contribute a lot to the bankrupting of America, and some unpleasant deaths.
The free market has determined that your organs are worth more than you as a whole.
Anyone who takes Wikipedia's word for anything without another source deserves whatever they get, and this is not due to the growth of sockpuppets. It's always been true. A teacher I know tells her students that to cite Wikipedia "is like telling me you saw it written on a bathroom wall at the bus depot."
Who would have thought someone would use a freely editable site to spread misinformation?
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
Vandals are a plague, but *paid vandals* are much more difficult to deal with.
Paid vandals who make admin status are even worse again, of course, but I suppose that is a different subject.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Why not make it official? Let's say politician X doesn't like the article written about him. Let him add a section _under his own name_ where he says what the truth is according to himself. Obviously the reader would know that this part wouldn't be unbiased.
On the other hand, there was the case of a German politician where Wikipedia got the name wrong - and wouldn't accept his statement what the correct name is. So it would be really good if that person could add a paragraph saying "these Wikidiots got my name wrong, and here's the correct name..."
Wow in one post you showed us that you don't understand the free market, communes, or wikipedia.
well done.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Have gnu, will travel.
Communes can work on a larger scale than 3, but there are serious issues when you get above about 150 or so. That corresponds with research about the number of people that one person can know. When you get a situation where everyone doesn't know everyone, you start to get a breakdown in the trust that is essential for a commune to function. Even with a strong government, it isn't socially/economically stable anymore. And it's always hard to get the next generation to agree to the social contract, if they have other options.
One example:
http://www.hutterites.org/
They limit at about 15 families (they run to very large families) per commune.
Unlike Slashdot, Wikipedia does not permit PR people to post openly under their own names. The result is what anyone would have predicted, sock puppets. Wikipedia needs to follow Slashdot's example and permit us to post under out own names.
Great. Just great. Zombie apocalypse is a good metaphor. If everything I hear about the Wikipedia editors is even half true, they're more dangerous than the PR people to most articles. They'd be the guys guarding the zombie free compound and when you walk up waving saying "Thank God I made it to safety." they shoot you, possibly for no reason and just announce another zombie killed. There are reasons that the Wikipedia editors get no thanks and a lot of it has to do with them deleting everybodies additions in their own little private domains as well as any sort of zombie reports.
I kind of feel bad for Jimmy Wales...it seems like he's been in waaay over his head ever since I first read an interview....
He was the lesser tech of the two who started wikipedia, and he kind of screwed his partner a bit...
But...what major online company doesn't have a story like that in its history? Not an excuse but puts it in context...
Wikipedia is awesome. The internet would suck without it.
Wikipedia has never had ads or attempted to become a pay service in any way...in that way Jimmy Wales is a saint
I know Jimmy Wales seems like a cheesey step-dad used-car-salesman type but he's capable of learning and improving...
Credit him for keeping wikipedia open...
Thank you Dave Raggett
The effective solution is suing these PR firms, who directed their employees to do things inherently violating Wiki's terms of service and which can be found liable for civil damages in degrading the quality of Wiki's product, which is supposed to follow the terms of service.
If someone cracks into a system, they get charged with illegal use of computer resources. if someone violates the EULA for a website, they can be similarly charged.
I see no reason why these PR firms couldn't therefore be charged with similar violations in court.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
But to what extent is sex for hire legal in Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, which are the other countries that read English Wikipedia?
This would be easy to combat. Setup an approval system in place before updates go live for a current events, products or companies.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
Wikipedia: The Encyclopedia that anybody (whom we approve) can edit.
They refuse to privilege, in any way, expertise, so why should they engage in demotion of non-expertise?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
How about we publish a Wiki page which names and shames said PR companies and their clients! That way we know exactly what products and services to avoid.
Call it sour grapes, if you want.
I have no idea why I was banned. I have not even been there in about six months. Just got a message that I posted too many "low quality questions." WTF?
I have no way to find out exactly what was wrong with the questions I posted. Nobody complained about the questions when they were posted. The questions were entirely honest. I was always polite, and respectful.
I think people should be banned when they post constant spam, or obscenities, or racist remarks, or something like that. Just because you post an honest question, and some smart-ass Nazi troll wants to act like a big shot by calling your question "low quality" is a poor reason to ban people, IMO.
There are episode by episode breakdowns of crappy TV shows but then you will get some interesting scientist who's entry is deleted for some reason such as relevance.
Then you get admins who "own" an article. So the new census will come out and someone will update the population of a city to reflect the new census and even cite the new census; but 5 minutes later the old numbers are back and the citation gone.
Then you get excellent articles filled with excellent information but some OCD twerp is threatening to delete it due to formatting issues.
Lastly you get the show off types. This is at its worst in mathematics. There is almost zero educational value in many of the mathematics related articles. The mathematics are perfect but instead of making things clear they use the most esoteric terminology/symbology. So 2+2=4 will become something like:
Using a Yungra transform you can compute that the Dirac set of {1, 1} when concatenated with the set Ramublablajan set {1,1} (each of which represents the empty set {0}) will have a resultant set of the Miller-Shiefler Series {1, 1, {0}, 1}.
An example of a complicated thing being made simple would be the article on RSA. The example math they use could be done using a pen and paper. Most Wiki Admins and editors would seem to despise this sort of simplicity and instead would probably rewrite the entire (excellent) article as a single formula that concisely sums up RSA. I personally prefer the sing-along version that is there now.
Oops, posted on wrong thread. Mea culpa.
Off topic indeed.
I'm here EdgeKeep Inc.
Stop hating women, and the problem goes away. Easy.
Free market capitalist systems recognize the fact that people ... will act in their own interest
Um, have you ever met people?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It only takes a few years after something wonderful is invented for somebody else to come along and make their livelihood by fucking up the wonderful new thing.
I would like to think these sockpuppet firms would get their asses sued into the ground somehow but I can't see that happening. In fact I think increasingly you cannot trust any opinion in any comments these days because there is so much of this shit going on everywhere.
The first mistake we made was in allowing commercial enterprises on the 'net :P
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
A not-unrelated problem is the creation of individual entries for living "non-famous" people. Every time I turn around I find another puff bio on someone that looks like a rip-mix-burn from their LinkedIn page. Some of these are for people I know personally, and it leaves me shaking my head. I suppose I could edit the prose to bring supposed accomplishments down to size, etc., and that might be the right thing to do, but who wants to start a war?
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. -- John von Neumann
Strange, isn't it. So many people act (and vote) as if their kumbiya fantasy were reality. People act in their self interest, they buy stuff they want and do things they want to do. Ergo, government control of what people buy can never work. Yet, they keep trying. Today, they think the government can force you to buy overpriced health insurance instead of spending your money on what your family really needs, and that's going to work. Good luck with that. 50 years ago, they figured they could order you not to take a job, to let your house be foreclosed rather than work for less than $ridiculous_union_package. It keeps not working, because people take care of themselves and their families, but they keep trying it again, failing every time.
I actually had the feeling that "regulatory capture" was well under way over at wikipedia. Call in an "independent" moderator to arbitrate a dispute, and you're likely to get another droid. For all I know, these people sincerely don't see any problem with "marketing" (if they did, they might have to find a real job).
Where is the EFF when you need them? This _is_ a really big deal.
PR undermines the truth in every way. It is a battle that is more than worthy of a fight.
I actually advocate for women's rights. I advocate for men's rights too. I don't hate women. I don't think equal rights activism needs feminism or any other damn ideology. Anti-Feminism is not Anti-Women. I hate bullshit ideologies not because I'm a sexist, but because because I'm a Scientist: I need peer reviewed evidence, not emotional appeals.
Here's an example of what I was talking about: Storming Wikipedia
Additionally, I know black folks who initially hated me because I'm white. We're now good friends. They stopped hating white people, their problems didn't go away. I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid your a moron.