This article was first published 15 years ago onAugust 22, 2005, eight months afterThe Signpost was founded. It may be the first Signpost article about paid editing, but certainly hasn't been the last. An earlier article,Outside groups targeting Wikipedia spur fears about bias, published February 7, 2005, a month afterThe Signpost's first issue raised similar questions about conflict-of-interest editing and canvassing.–S

Twice recently, television organizations have been accused of attempting to use Wikipedia for promotional purposes.The BBC recently added articles onJamie Kane andBoy*d Upp, a fictional character and band existing in a BBC alternate-reality game. In another incident,G4'sAttack of the Show program, to commemorate an appearance byJimbo Wales, createdUser:Attackoftheshow, a user page which was used primarily as a sandbox for interested viewers to edit, raising questions over whether the usage was permissable or not.

OnAugust 12, a new user created an article aboutJamie Kane, asserting that the fictional star of a boy band was real. The article was quickly tagged for speedy deletion, then taken to VfD.Uncle G and other editors changed the article, expanding it and making note that the band was fictional. The VfD subsequently failed, though a series of unsigned and unregistered users attempted to vote.

Later, an article on the fictional band,Boy*d Upp, was created by an IP address inside the BBC, assumed to be a BBC employee. This article was also tagged for VfD, and was deleted, then redirected toJamie Kane. BBC confirmed that an employee had written the article, but denied that it was meant to promote the game:

"The first posting was simply a case of a fan of the game getting into the spirit of alternative reality a little too much. The follow up posting was made by a fan of the game who happens to work in the BBC (where we've been beta-testing for the last month). This was unauthorized and made without the knowledge of anyone in the Jamie Kane Team or BBC Marketing. To confirm: the BBC would never use Wikipedia as a marketing tool."

OnAugust 16,G4 aired an interview with Wikipedia founderJimbo Wales. They created a user page for the show, where viewers could edit as they pleased. Vandalism ensued, and just a day after the episode aired, and over 1200 edits after the page was created, the page was protected. As of press time, the page is still protected to deal with vandalism.

Tony Sidaway protected the page immediately after it was created, but Jimbo unprotected it and instructed administrators to leave it open, because he had already talked with G4, and authorized the move.

From Wikipedia's point of view:

• if it successfully draws people's attention to the product, then it's highly likely that editors will notice it; once the editors get there they can begin to deal with it
• if the article is accurate, then it's possibly a legitimate article
• if it's not wiki-worthy, then the editing process will make it so, or delete it

From the marketers point of view the Wikipedia is a difficult choice:

• if the article is biased, then the Wikipedia's editors will balance it (it seems reasonable not to expect the marketers to much enjoy that balancing)
• in any case, once they've placed it in Wikipedia, the marketers will have lost control of it, and from their point of view it is totally a loose cannon. Again, they probably won't like that much.

This raises the legitimate question of whether marketing spam may be a problem in the future. While this is a common occurrence onSpecial:Newpages patrol, a more confusing type of spamming such as theJamie Kane articles may occur, where many users may be confused over whether the article's content is real, fake, or even vanity. Perhaps what is most reassuring is that all three pages were quickly found and taken care of. Nevertheless, this is a problem that may occur again in the near future.

If they'd known then how much effort would be involved in the next 15 years against it, it might have doomed the project!Nosebagbear (talk)19:19, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's the way of most pioneering efforts that succeed against all odds, isn't it? When you look back at everything that went into it and consider how many times along the way it could've easily all fallen apart with the eyes of your modern-day self, the idea ofchoosing to face all of that would be understandably daunting. Fortunately for every one of those long-odds success stories, people on the starting line of such things rarely know just what they're getting into! --FeRDNYC (talk)22:06, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• It's so weird to see this article use "the Wikipedia" in places. Like how Zuckerberg used to talk about "the Facebook", way back in the beginning. Glad we grew out ofthat! --FeRDNYC (talk)13:22, 31 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Poke you on the Facebook!Nosebagbear (talk)
• I use theDuckDuckGo search engine and, if there is a Wikipedia article on whatever I'm searching for, it will appear in the upper right corner of the search results. To the casual user it gives the appearance of credibility no matter how questionably sourced that article may be. In the case of BLPs paid editors have clearly decided that promoting their clients on Wikipedia far outweighs the risk that other editors can change their client bios. The paid editors have all day to monitor their client's social media because that's what they do for a living. If another editor makes changes they can immediately revert or subtly make incremental daily edits to get it back to what they want it to be. From what I've seen in AfD discussions promotional editing seems to fall into one of two categories. The first are fans of a subject who genuinely like the performer and think they should be on Wikipedia. In good faith they write an article but don't understandWP:GNG orWP:RS. They think Youtube subscribers or Instagram followers count for notability. Add to this the services likeauthoritytitans who send promotional material to what appear to be legitimate news sites. The second group are paid editors who might, for example, vastly inflate a passing mention or single quote made by their client in the New York Times and imply that it was a full biographical profile. They have professional associates who can be called to the AfD page to counter and overwhelm any !Delete comments. And, unless there is overwhelming consensus for deletion, the default decision is to keep the article. Thus, promotional bios and product spam tends to stay.BlueRiband►19:01, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Quite sinister your description, Mr.Blue, of professional paid agents abusing Wikipedia just because they can without much risks. But I'd guess that's possible and real. Nevertheless I'd say in normal editing days I don't even think about that, I'm just not that paranoid. But OTOH the possibilities are still creepy. --Just N. (talk)16:08, 5 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Ah, but a long-time would-be rival has taken on the definite article:The CitizendiumJim.henderson (talk)20:05, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]