Major Wikipedia Donors Caught Editing Their Own Articles

An anonymous reader writes "As reported before on Slashdot, one of the most terrible sins on Wikipedia is to edit articles for pay, or otherwise violate the 'neutral point of view' policy, per their co-founder Jimmy Wales. And yet, the Wikipedia-criticism website Wikipediocracy recently began a study showing that dozens of the Wikimedia Foundation's largest cash donors have violated that policy. Repeatedly, and wantonly. In short, they wrote articles about themselves or their companies, then gave the WMF big donations — and were not confronted about violating the NPOV policy." Do the proposed TOS changes address this? Note that they also found that many of the donors adequately documented their conflict of interest.

Conflict

[Ksevio]

It's true that in theory, it's a conflict of interest to edit an article about one's self/company, but these are also the people most knowledgeable on the subject and have the most to contribute. I imagine the people who are large cash donors aren't trying to do it as a bribe, they're just heavy wikipedia users that wanted to help the site. Ideally they should document a conflict of interest, but that's not very clear how it should be done.

Non sequitur

[mysidia]

Companies and individuals edit articles about themselves, if they ARE or ARE NOT donors.

Please explain the logic that says you should not donate to Wikipedia, if you have edited an article about yourself?

OK, just because you edited your own article doesn't mean it's not NPOV. But let's say it was biased in your favor...

So what if the article is not NPOV? Other editors will participate in its development.

Also, if you can't prove your notability beyond a shadow of a doubt, there turn out to be an army of deletionists visiting all the articles who will be more than happy to nominate you for deletion in a few heartbeats.

Drama Queen Slashdot

[BitZtream]

So some people made donations, then followed all the rules for editing their own stuff ... and you're getting your panties in a twist because?

No one is even bitching that what they wrote was misleading. The entire complaint is simply that it happened at all.

Thats fucking retarded, shut up and crawl back in your scumbag, drag others down to your level hole. Slashdot should go with it for posting this kind of crap.

What the fuck is wrong with you people, most of the big donators are fucking editors, these people are 'in to' wikipedia, of course they edit stuff THEY KNOW ABOUT ... which is THEIR STUFF.

Unless they are lying, misleading or misrepresenting, then whats the problem? Come up with an actual problem with what they did before you blow it out of proportion.

They followed the rules and aren't a problem, STFU FFS.

Re:Where is the big problem?

[wonkey_monkey]

until its been posted on some blog somewhere first...

No, that would be ridiculous. It has to be posted on one blog and linked to from another blog.

Re:Where is the big problem?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Makes perfect sense for their intended purpose. Wiki pages are supposed to be accepted knowledge not ground-breaking and controversial theories. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a science journal.

Re:Spin Baby Spin

[Andreas Kolbe]

It's worth noting that the Wikipedia article on the game was created four days before the launch of the game's hardcopy version. Basically, it would have supported the launch. In the 2013 Christmas season, the article got over 120,000 views (around 4,000 views a day throughout December 2013). Smart marketing.