Wikipedia Actively Battling PR Sockpuppets 166
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."
Re:Thankless. Well let me be the first to say (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm seeing this more on the biography side (Score:5, Funny)
Wikipedia has a "biography of living persons" policy
Sometimes the solution is right in front of you.
Re:Free Market (Score:5, Funny)
The free market has determined that your organs are worth more than you as a whole.
Re:Thankless. Well let me be the first to say (Score:5, Funny)
So personal. So appealing.
"Jimmy, here's 20 bucks man. No, just keep it dude. I'll check out your cool homepage later."
He's like that cool friend who rarely asks for anything, and when he does you totally don't mind hooking him up. His car is totally old and beat-up and has taco bell wrappers in the back seat but everyone loves riding to shows in it. And....
The analogy goes further but I'll leave it there.
Re:Vandalism (Score:2, Funny)
This isn't business.
THIS. IS. WikipediAAAAAAAAA!