Wikipedia Scandal: High Profile Users Allegedly Involved In Paid-Editing 154
An anonymous reader writes "A new Wikipedia scandal: two high profile users, one of them board member of Wikimedia UK seem to have been caught doing edits for personal profit. It was also discovered that they ran an SEO business related to Wikipedia. Quoting: 'Roger Bamkin, trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation UK, whose LinkedIn page describes him as a high-return-earning PR consultant, appeared to be using Wikipedia's main page "Did You Know" feature and the resources of Wikipedia's GLAM WikiProject (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) initiative to pimp his client's project. Bamkin's current client is the country of Gibraltar.'"
...... so? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Where is the problem?
Thanks, The cheque is in the post.
Re:...... so? (Score:5, Funny)
Being human. That's the problem. I don't know of any other animal that cheats, lies, steals, and deceives like we do. Whatever happened to just plain ol killing?! Oh...never mind.
My dog is pretty good at stealing - she'll take a steak off the table when I leave the room. When she hears me coming back, she'll scurry over to her bed and lie there innocently, which I guess is her way of lying about it. And she has never once admitted to getting into the trash while I'm at work, even if the trash is still stuck to her head. She think she is a good liar but she doesn't know when she's been caught red-handed.
If she ever catches a squirrel in the back yard, I think she'll prove herself to be a killer as well.
Re:...... so? (Score:5, Funny)
Bitches. You can't trust em.
Re:...... so? (Score:5, Informative)
The wiki page where the complaint was first raised:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Potential_abuse_of_DYK [wikipedia.org]
Jimmy Wales talk page where the argument is happeninng now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales [wikipedia.org]
Discussions on Wikipedia critics forum:
http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=914 [wikipediocracy.com]
http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=926 [wikipediocracy.com]
Re:...... so? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it is incredibly slimy when Jimmy Wales' personal user talk page is made into a policy discussion forum.... as if Jimmy Wales has any real authority on Wikipedia any more. His talk page tends to be the last bastion of the trolls who aren't getting their way in other places and think that somehow Wales will bless their viewpoint and take action on something.
My experience when Jimmy Wales actually does something is that it is usually violating existing policies and often acts first and explains later... if ever. There are enough Wales fanbois to follow behind that the policies often change to rationalize the actions. Rarely the community pushes back, especially on English Wikipedia itself. The non-English projects seem to avoid that kind of cult-like following, so I think it is something unique to mostly en.wikipedia. On the other hand, when he weighs in on a controversial topic in the regular community forums by talking first and mostly leaving the actual implementation of the idea to others, his input is usually much more appreciated and considerably less damaging.
Back when Jimmy Wales actually owned the server farm running Wikipedia and the developers running that server farm were on his personal payroll, it might have made some sense to give him a little bit of extra authority on getting things done. That hasn't been the case for many years yet somehow the notion that he is "in charge" persists.
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In what way does Wales not have authority in the Wikipedia domain? This is not a rhetorical/snarky question, I'm genuinely curious. He holds the founding seat on the board, and at least claims to be highly involved. Is their coverage available that would support contrary views about his involvement and influence?
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Jimmy Wales gave up his authority and rights to the Wikipedia domain name, trademark and server farm when he set up the Wikimedia Foundation. While he still holds a seat on the board of trustees, he is but one of a nine member board and is no longer even the chair of that board.
There was an earlier little tiff where several members of the community tried to strip Jimmy Wales of his "founder" status so far as having any sort of access to administrator tools on the Wikimedia projects. Even on stuff like tha
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as if Jimmy Wales has any real authority on Wikipedia any more
Right now the foundation board has 10 memebers 4 of which were apointed by the board, 5 by the community and one of which is wales himself.
So the real question is the loyalty of those 4 appointed board members. If they are more loyal to wales than the community it would be virtually impossible for the community to overrule him the most they could do is produce a tie in a board vote (interestingly the bylaws of the foundation don't seem to specify what happens in that case). OTOH if the appointed board memem
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When the board was originally set up, the loyalty to Jimmy Wales was unquestioned. At this point, however, I don't think it is so axiomatic that they will go along with anything that Jimmy Wales would propose even though obviously it would be seriously considered and he can directly participate in board meetings.
The appointed board members supposedly are "specialists" who have a specific skill (legal, public relations, technical, or something like that) which can benefit the foundation and the projects. T
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Also, there are many well-documented cases of situations of the type where a dog has a limp when the owner is around, getting all sorts of special treatment, but they if no one is in the has and the dog is observed through a window it does not limp.
I love my dog, but I also accept the fact that 100,000 years of evolution has turned him from a noble animal into a manipulative little parasite!
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Being human. That's the problem. I don't know of any other animal that cheats, lies, steals, and deceives like we do. Whatever happened to just plain ol killing?! Oh...never mind.
Pretty sure I read it here on /. that chimpanzees have been recorded lying/deceiving like we do. They even plan for their future lies/deceit.
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Re:...... so? (Score:5, Funny)
larger animal often 'toy' with smaller until they die. eg: Cats.
"Well I planned to eat it, but ooooooooh, string! STring! String!"
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>larger animal often 'toy' with smaller until they die.
Yup and male lions kill rival cubs. Foxes can rip heads off all chickens in a coop and leave bodies exposed. I'm sure certain monkeys do "bad stuff" too.
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Re:...... so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia airs their dirty laundry in public because of the collaborative nature of the project and general transparency of the discussion forums. Most other similar organizations do this kind of discipline much more in private and certainly not while "deliberations" are going on to decide upon a course of action or even to consider if the issue is relevant and should be addressed.
If that makes the whole process seem like a house of disorder, that is by design. Committees are rarely neat and tidy.
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Can we get a +6 mod?
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By these criteria one of the most honest entities is a rock. It just sits there and never cheats or steals.
Given that only humans can form the mental concepts necessary to cheat or steal, of course only humans will do so. It's like praising people without hands for never pickpocketing.
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I don't see how this damages the reputation of Wikipedia.
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According to wikipedia... (Score:3, Funny)
Gibralta is a region just north of Africa that is under British rule and all the inhabitants are perfectly happy with this state of affairs
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We can ignore the fact that most British people are not happy with the government they have. A government that is in the business of selling that which belongs to the people of the country to their mates. Steal as much as they can while in office seems to be what's behind the actions of the cabinet.
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Steal as much as they can while in office seems to be what's behind the actions of the cabinet.
How this differs from any other government?
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This government is still better than the last government...
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This government is still better than the last government...
It's definitely better at U-Turns and demonising the low hanging fruit.
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Gibralta is a region just north of Africa that is under British rule and all the inhabitants are perfectly happy with this state of affairs
While true it is a very odd description for a parliamentary off Spain [goo.gl]. Yes Spain is "a region just north of Africa", and the inhalants are happy being a British territory. Its odd not to mention that Spain are not very happy [wikipedia.org] with "the rock" being under British rule.
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Gibralta is a region just north of Africa that is under British rule and all the inhabitants are perfectly happy with this state of affairs
While true it is a very odd description for a parliamentary off Spain [goo.gl]. Yes Spain is "a region just north of Africa", and the inhalants are happy being a British territory. Its odd not to mention that Spain are not very happy [wikipedia.org] with "the rock" being under British rule.
Damned spell check .. that's "Promontory off Spain" though Peninsula may have been better
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And yet you missed "inhalants" in your correction. Sniffing glue again?
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There isn't any dispute that the inhabitants really are happy that it is under British rule. Spain says that the wishes of the inhabitants don't affect who owns it; Spain does not say that Britain is lying about the wishes of the inhabitants.
By the way, Spain itself owns little pieces of land next to Morocco [wikipedia.org] similar to Gibraltar. Of course Spain insists that the situation is completely different since Spain conquered them in the 1500's instead of the 1700's.
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A bad thing? (Score:1, Informative)
As FUBAR as wiki is I don't see how it can possibly matter.
As an aside, there is data concerning impact craters that is no longer correct, I tried to edit the entry for the Moon and Mars; the hoops one has to go through made the entire process less than worthwhile.
Re:A bad thing? (Score:4, Informative)
Articles like those get a lot of elementary school students messing with them, which is why they are often semi-protected.
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I work at a hospital. Browsing our IP range contributions just scares me.
These things happen (Score:5, Insightful)
If they act like the Catholic Church and protect the abusers, that's another matter.
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That's not what the parent poster was stating, nice straw man.
Re:These things happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a comprehension clue for you, the GP is not talking about the act itself, he is talking about the morality of someone else covering them up to "protect" the institution. In TFA it was members of WP themselves who blew the whistle and took action, whereas the church has done everything it can to ignore the whistle, blame the victims, and shield the priests from the law. That an encyclopedia has more moral fiber than the Catholic Church should be a concern to everyone.
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That an encyclopedia has more moral fiber than the Catholic Church should be a concern to everyone.
I don't think, any entity having higher moral standards than organization responsible for Inqusition, stagnation of all aspects of culture in Dark Ages, first European invasions of Middle East, and sabotage of economic and social development of Latin America, is in any way unusual or concerning for anyone.
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You really don't get that whole progress through history thing, do you?
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Evidence for progress seems a bit thin. Even a very senior Cardinal has said that the Catholic Church is 200 years behind the times.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19453974 [bbc.co.uk]
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You really don't get that whole progress through history thing, do you?
That continues now, in exactly the same tradition:
and sabotage of economic and social development of Latin America
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First of all, historians don't use the term "Dark Ages" and haven't for decades now. Late antiquity and the early medieval era were more complicated than such a simplistic label.
Yes, however the Catholic Church dominance in Europe was the very aspect of society and politics that given that period such a derogatory-sounding name.
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I wanna edit that and get rid of the hyphen.
And I want to edit your comment. Do spell checkers pass "wanna" these days?
Remember DMOZ? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you remember DMOZ, the community edited links directory, that died a death because they didn't tackle paid interests.
I'd edit a category to remove keyword stuffing, and kill links to sites that were simply keyword stuffed pages with lots of links to another site. Obvious SEO stuff. As soon as I did that, a senior editor would drop buy, re-instate the links, and in coordination, the spammy gateway page would be replaced by a plausible site. After 2-3 months, the site would revert back to the spammy gateway page again.
Of course the senior editors were linked to those sites, and that's why there was such close co-ordination, but there was nothing you could do about it. DMOZ did nothing to fix it, and people just stopped caring, it went away.
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It's a bit more complicated than that... (it usually is). On top of a variety of internal problems, there was also the arrival of Google - which badly hurt hierarchical directory sites all over the web.
Not that DMOZ has gone away, it's still around... it's just irrelevant in the eyes of many. Not because of linkspam, but because it's harder to use.
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DMOZ is dead and irrelevant because its editors have made sure its crap, not because of the arrival of Google. Try get a legitimate site on there, in a legitimate category, through the submissions process. Try it. I defy you to do it.
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Translation: "My mind is made up, don't confuse me with facts".
Sure Jimmy, sure. (Score:1, Troll)
From Jimmy Whales, the biggest WikiWhore of them all: "I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I TELL YOU"
Sure Jimmy, sure.
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And what about the children?
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Actually Jimmy takes no salary from the Wikimedia Foundation and doesn't even ask for expenses to be covered. He could have easily exploited Wikipedia's popularity to become a billionaire, but chose not to. Instead he just gets to be the butt of stupid jokes like this one from people who have no idea what they're talking about.
Re:Sure Jimmy, sure. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually Jimmy takes no salary from the Wikimedia Foundation and doesn't even ask for expenses to be covered. He could have easily exploited Wikipedia's popularity to become a billionaire, but chose not to. Instead he just gets to be the butt of stupid jokes like this one from people who have no idea what they're talking about.
he's found a better way than salary.
"The way Mr. Wales makes a living is by getting $50,000 to $70,000 per speaking engagement when he goes and lectures about Wikipedia.[6][7][8][9]."
he's burning through 21k/month from money ultimately derived from the bizniz, not bad.
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Obviously Wikipedia would be better served if Jimbo lived the life of a pauper and died penniless in the streets.
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He was already rich when he started Wikipedia.
Re:Sure Jimmy, sure. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, I had a low view of Mr Wales, but I gained a lot of respect when he played such a major role in the SOPA blackout. If it weren't for him, and the bold step of blacking out Wikipedia, I'm not sure the blackout would have even been an event.
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1. Extremely expensive speaking engagements. Standard way to buy favors of politicians.
2. Wikia. Wikipedia is so deletionist as it is because if content is driven over to Wikia, Jimbo can make a profit of it with his giant Smurf ads.
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Wrong, and wrong. It's Wikia, Inc, a privately owned for profit enterprise. It was founded by Jimmy Wales (and Angela Beelsley, another Wikipedia bigwig), I'd call that a pretty big connection. They still own it as far as I know.
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Incidentally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you trust anybody who(voluntarily no less) describes themselves as an 'SEO Consultant?
Surely such people would be as laboriously excluded from polite company as their abominable creations are from search indices and email queues?
GLAM (Score:4, Interesting)
GLAM wasn't created by normal Wikipedia editors. It was something the foundation made up to draw in people who don't really give a shit about open source type ideals.
It's not really a surprise that it would end this way.
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"longtime Wikipedian"
A couple well connected people taking an idea straight to the foundation and the foundation ramming the idea down the throat of the community is nothing like the normal process.
The community would never accept the "Wikipedian in Residence" idea, for example. It's pretty much a built-in conflict of interest.
The burden is on you here. Show me the big community-wide discussions that lead to the creation of this GLAM stuff. They don't exist.
OK... (Score:5, Funny)
So who wants to write the Wikipedia article on this scandal?
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How much is it worth to you?
I knew something like this was or is happening (Score:1)
I use Wiki nominally so i don't care about this situation. I am personally not surprised about this because when it (the site) first popped up years ago i thought to myself "what's to keep someone who's pissed off at you putting up whatever they want about you?".
Think about it.
Re:I knew something like this was or is happening (Score:5, Funny)
I use Wiki nominally so i don't care about this situation. I am personally not surprised about this because when it (the site) first popped up years ago i thought to myself "what's to keep someone who's pissed off at you putting up whatever they want about you?".
Think about it.
I did, and updated the article about you accordingly.
Re:I knew something like this was or is happening (Score:5, Funny)
I did that to win a fake argument and poke fun with someone once. This was a while ago when Wikipedia was newish and I was messing with someone who I know claimed that everything on Wikipedia was 100% correct. He was learning about networking and I tried to convince him that the E in cat5e stood for elevated, it was the cables you used to run above the ceiling tiles. He insisted I was wrong and demanded I checked the Wikipedia entry. I had a friend change the entry while we were arguing about it and not only did he edit it to say that cat 5e stood for the "elephant- because it never forgets" standard, but added that anyone listening to (his first name) would be wrong in any explanation by default.
You should have seen the look on his face when he looked it up to prove me wrong seconds later in front of 4 or 5 of us. Priceless.
Gibraltar (Score:1)
I knew Gibraltar couldn't be trusted.
These things happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Identify the cretins, remove them, shame them publicly and move on. Does not invalidate Wikipedia or its approach at all.
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Yes, it does invalidate WP... They've got tons of bureaucratic policies, crippling admins from intervening all the time, and making editing WP a nightmare. And yet none of it worked to flag or stop some true corruption of WP.
I long assumed WP would eventually die of neglect, as anonymous editors push their POVs in random articles with few editors. But maybe corrupt admins will do far more damage, much more quickly than the pleebs could ever hope to do so.
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Identify the cretins, remove them, shame them publicly
... crush them, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women.
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That would be overkill. Also, what to do with female cretins (cretinas?) and male ones in a same-sex marriage? Accept lamentations of their husbands as well? No, better do without lamentations and crushing.
Gibraltar is not a country. (Score:5, Informative)
Gibraltar is not a country, it is a British overseas territory [fco.gov.uk].
Re:Gibraltar is not a country. (Score:5, Funny)
-1 for not linking to the Wikipedia page
Re:Gibraltar is not a country. (Score:4, Funny)
-1 for not linking to the Wikipedia page
I wanted an xkcd.
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Here you go: http://xkcd.com/850/ [xkcd.com]
It clearly labels Gibraltar as a country.
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Wikipedia (Score:5, Funny)
no such thing as Wikimedia Foundation UK (Score:5, Informative)
There is no such thing as "Wikimedia Foundation UK". There is "Wikimedia UK" (officially "Wiki UK limited"). The Wikimedia Foundation is a US-based organization that runs the servers that host Wikipedia and handles the associated administrative and financial matters. Wikimedia UK is just a local users' organization, also known as a "chapter".
By writing "Wikimedia Foundation UK", the article writer seemed to imply that Roger Bamkin was a powerful person regarding the management of Wikipedia / Wikimedia sites. This is not the case.
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It looks like Roger Bamkin has been convincing his clients [wikimedia.org] that he's a powerful person regarding the management of Wikipedia sites, so...
why is this even news? (Score:2)
anyone who thinks of wikipedia in the same light as britannica or world book is a moron
wikipedia is full of interesting stuff, but it should never be relied on as a reliable source
The "Country" of gibraltar? (Score:2)
Wikipedia is a drama factory (Score:3)
I only edit anonymously, and I do not talk to any other editors.
Gibraltar is not a country (Score:2)
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I don't want to deal with misinformed people.
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That's why I don't want more and more horribly misinformed people.
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Does this mean that you concede the argument, or is it some kind of bizarre demand to consider all arguments unimportant if they happen on the Internet?
Re:This is expected (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would someone who has no vested interest in the page do any work on improving it?
Have a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism [wikipedia.org]
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Thanks. That page on Altruism was wrong though, so I improved it for you.
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Why would someone who has no vested interest in the page do any work on improving it?
Are you making a joke? How do you think Wikipedia came to exist?
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It was erased because it was not a suitable "TIL" submission.
Rule I is "Submissions must be verifiable", which was not the case. The only mention was a random blog that claimed that he tried threatening Wikipedia. Instead, it got remvoed as part of a regular deletion process [wikipedia.org].
Rule V: "No misleading claims". If lawyers were involved, there would be a record in WP:OFFICE, along with other discussion outside the regular deletion process. An example of a billionare-class entity badgering Wikipedia can be fou
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Rule 1: The submission linked to a Village Voice editorial which itself linked to the original story which itself linked to court records. The allegations in the story may or may not be true, but I have read many other submissions with less verifiable support.
Rule V: The claim was that Wikipedia deleted a page. Wikipedia did indeed delete the page. Why it deleted the page was the subject of the discussion.