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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.
Was there ever a more vile and sociopathic concept than "reputation management"?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
the list of articles that were deleted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, and its open model makes it a rich and reliable resource for the world."
Or, in reality, a handful of basement dwellers sit on the edit history or every article and straight up harass you for making additions or corrections, because they are "wiki".
It's about as reliable as any web forum or blog at this point, maybe worse because it's as famous as google at this point. It's good to see them cutting out the blatant paid posters, but that's not even the bulk of the issue with wikipedia. It's the little closed circle of editors who believe they own the content and the rest of us peons aren't allowed to join the party.
Case in point, the last time I bothered modifying an article on a subject that I'm quite knowledgeable on. Modified an article to add some relevant information and provided sources and citations.
I was promptly banned from making edits and my changes were reverted. Ok great, whatever right? Well if I bothered to tell you which article I'm referring to, you could go look right now and see the content I added is now back, same source, same citations. The only difference is one of the super special wiki-gods didn't like that I, a lowly peon, posted it, so they banned me, then re-added everything they removed under their own name.
This is wikipedia in a nutshell.
Won't make any difference at all. Wikipedia in itself has a serious editorial and sourcing problem anyway, which is causing it to become highly untrusted even by laymen.
Om, nomnomnom...
Has Slashdot investigated if there are paid downmodders to hide comments certain factions don't like? Or upmod, for that matter?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Was there ever a more vile and sociopathic concept than "reputation management"?
Yes. Quite a few of them actually. Reputation management is something we all do to some degree. I don't know how you would exist in a complex society without some amount of effort directed towards maintaining your reputation in the community.
Protecting your reputation is not in principle a bad thing. Sometimes false or misleading information becomes public and can cause problems - sometimes serious ones. Nothing wrong with taking reasonable steps to guard against such things. Of course like most things you can go too far and try to hide wrongdoing but just because something is bad in some circumstances does not make it bad in all circumstances.
Who uses Wikipedia as a trusted source? It's value is in quick information on a number of non contentious topics. Going to Toronto and want to get some quick facts about the city? Wikipedia is great for that. I just wouldn't use it to make any important decisions, and maybe it really doesn't need to be that anyway.
Most of the socks identified are pointless spam. Theyre a drain on resources for articles pertaining to companies that exist to pump-and-dump stocks, or lend legitimacy to an advertising campaign. They arent the malicious chicanery that goes on in articles like the Iraq war where verbiage is literally inserted to de-emphasize for example the categorical failure of the united states to identify WMD's.
more attention needs to be lent to dealing with controversial articles on the RIAA, the trans continental partnership, and the nature of large entities that can afford to muddle their tracks. For example, how many edits to the Coca Cola wiki article have been made and by whom? What edits get made to pages on the gulf oil disaster and on Time Warners article?
Good people go to bed earlier.
I was sitting here drinking a refreshing Coca Cola when I started reading this story on my Apple iPhone 6 Plus. The level of paid shills that infested Wikipedia were getting bothersome. It was at the point that I started using my Encyclopædia Britannica (2015 edition).
Sorry if I don't get to your replies sooner, I'm taking the Prius to Chipotle for a GMO-free lunch.
Trolling is a art,
I like to see Wikipedia say "No paid postings/sock puppets" in their TOS and a $10,000 per violation click-wrap agreement.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Removing that thimble of water from that ocean is going to make a HUGE difference. Oh wait, no it won't.
Wikipedia has become another little internet fiefdom run by a bunch of backstabbing assholes who use their basement-dwelling power to rule capriciously and for personal gain.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
And what about this Anonymous Coward fellow?? I've seen more tripe and shilling take place under that moniker than any other, the others seem to pale into insignificance when you consider the things that account posts!
It would almost lead one to believe that every paid shill and troll on the planet is sharing the username and password for that account, which amounts to abuse on a massive scale! We should ban this account, it seems that it would go a long way to restoring public decency here on /.!
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
Yes, but most of us do our "reputation management" by, you know, behaving properly rather than going around trying to erase any record of our misdeeds.
You can behave properly all you want and still get screwed by false information or malicious deeds. A service that helps people combat this sort of problem is fine. Some people are just assholes and will try to ruin your reputation out of spite or just because they can. Ask any restaurant if they get nothing but fair and honest reviews on Yelp. Even if people aren't actively trying to ruin you, nobody is perfect and minor mistakes can sometimes cause major problems - problems far out of scale with the deeds.
Usually when people come into conflict with the regular editors its because the editor has found genuine fault with the edits....
"usually" but not "always", or even "most of the time", in my experience.
.
My experiences have nothing to do with the hot-button issues of climate change or other tin-foil-hat "denier" items.
For example, in one instance the summary of a TV episode was wrong. I had just watch the episode on DVD, and I was curious about something in the episode, so one of the items I checked was the Wikipedia article about the episode. Having just finished watching the episode, I noticed a spot where the summary was wrong. I even re-watched that portion of the episode, and the summary was indeed wrong. So I found an online transcript of the episode, checked it to be sure it matched the DVD episode, and then edited the article (with a pointer to the online transcript).
The hovering editor would not let my edit go through (i.e., he reverted my edit) because it did not agree with the version of the summary that he had posted.
When I pointed to the transcript, the editor then said he rejected my edit because I had used an incorrect tense for the verb in one of my sentences. (If he were interested in the accuracy of the article, why didn't he just correct the tense of the verb?)
At that point I realized the hovering editor would reject anything that changed his version of the summary, so I just punted. The whole episode confirmed what I had heard about Wikipedia, and started me on the path to forming the opinion of Wikipedia that I currently hold, i.e., that Wikipedia is entertaining, but don't go there to verify information.
Most people do. Encyclopaedia Britannica is no longer published in physical form, and does anyone much use the online version?
Despite the possibility of abuse, Wikipedia was a better encyclopaedia than the best physical encyclopaedia. It's vast coverage and constant editing as new things come to light, outweighs it's flaws.
Wikipedia is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy of today (the fictional electronic book in the same titled SciFi novel). It can be inaccurate but is usually good enough...
Even for college classes which bar use of Wikipedia directly, going through the citations and downloading/buying the works that were mentioned to read is a solid way to write a paper.
Wikipedia is one of the few places on the web that I can get meaningful info without having to deal with paywalls, full page ads, demands to create a user account or link to FB (so they can post freely as your ID), or other crap.
Of course, it isn't perfect. It is hard to get past the stage where any meaningful/relevant/on topic additions to an article don't just get blindly reverted by another person because one is a new user and doesn't have any reputation.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...