Wikipedia Blocks Hundreds of Accounts Doing Paid Editing

jan_jes writes: After weeks of investigation, Wikipedia has blocked 381 user accounts for "black hat" editing. The reason for the ban is that the accounts were engaged in undisclosed paid advocacy — the practice of accepting or charging money to promote external interests on Wikipedia without revealing their affiliation, in violation of Wikimedia's Terms of Use. In addition to blocking the 381 "sockpuppet" account, the editors deleted 210 articles created by these accounts.

Comments

list of articles deleted

[penandpaper]

the list of articles that were deleted:

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

Re:Hey

[Anonymous Coward]

Sales Department?

K St Lobbyist?

Weapons Dealer?

Anonymous Coward?

Re:Not bad in principle

[meta-monkey]

But not everyone is in the public eye. Think of all the good, normal, upstanding stuff you do every day, and of course nobody notices and splashes "PopeRatzo is a great guy!" all over the internet. But you don't think and screw up one time and you could find yourself destroyed online. There are no 1000 good stories about PopeRatzo to drown out the one about the time you passed out drunk and shit yourself in a Wendy's. Reputation management is good for such cases.

For many people, their 15 minutes of fame are 15 minutes of infamy. There was the woman (whose name I will not mention so as not to further googlize her name in connection with this) who had a stupid game she played with a friend where they would take pictures of themselves next to signs doing the opposite of whatever the sign said. She wasn't thinking and did that in front of a sign asking for quiet and respect at Arlington National Cemetery. She failed to understand the privacy options on FaceBook, posted it to her friend's wall, and it went viral. Lost her job, death threats, whole works. A reputation management company helped get her life back together.

I don't think this woman was an awful person, intentionally expressing hatred for America and dead soldiers. I think she forgot context, used poor judgment, and doesn't deserve to have her life ruined over it. I'm glad she's doing better now.