The Rise of Paid Wikipedia Consulting 85
jfruh writes "Roger Bamkin is a director at Wikimedia UK; he also is on retainer for the government of the British territory of Gibraltar, and has nominated and approved Gibraltar-related articles for the "Did You Know" box on the Wikipedia front page. Maximilian Klein runs a business called UntrikiWiki, and advertises his services by saying "A positive Wikipedia article is invaluable SEO." Are such users violating the spirit of what Wikipedia is about? Or should we trust that the wisdom of crowds will offset obvious shilling?"
I have been paid to write articles. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have been paid to write articles and pitch them to many magazines just to create published sources that are then used to force wikipedia articles in a certain direction with sources. Specifically, I wrote about Quantum Fiction (which has a crazy misogynist edit history) and my article is getting published in a real magazine, at the end of this week. As soon as it appears, it will be used to further the edit war on the Quantum Fiction page.
Re:Do you think (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think it's so much that this is the first time in history that history can be bought. It's probably more of a discussion on the price.
Re:Do you think (Score:3, Interesting)
yeah, but at that point wiki-foundation or whatever should just go ahead and charge for it as an entity and stop the "we are a nonprofit with no corporate overloards so please give us money" yearly charity drives. This degrades the integrity of the site just the same if not worse, because it survives on public donations to keep the servers running, then allows the already oft-bitched about moderators to sell what amounts to ad space for personal profit when they are in between talk page flame wars, online powertrips and other poor judgment calls.