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In the media
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paid advocacy

How paid editors squeeze you dry
31 January 2024

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4 December 2023

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20 February 2023

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31 August 2022

The oligarchs' socks
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More articles

Fuzzy-headed government editing
30 January 2022

Denial: climate change, mass killings and pornography
29 November 2021

Paid promotional paragraphs in German parliamentary pages
26 September 2021

Enough time left to vote! IP ban
29 August 2021

Paid editing by a former head of state's business enterprise
25 April 2021

A "billionaire battle" on Wikipedia: Sex, lies, and video
28 February 2021

Concealment, data journalism, a non-pig farmer, and some Bluetick Hounds
28 December 2020

How billionaires rewrite Wikipedia
29 November 2020

Ban on IPs on ptwiki, paid editing for Tatarstan, IP masking
1 November 2020

Paid editing with political connections
27 September 2020

WIPO, Seigenthaler incident 15 years later
27 September 2020

Wikipedia for promotional purposes?
30 August 2020

Dog days gone bad
2 August 2020

Fox News, a flight of RfAs, and banning policy
2 August 2020

Some strange people edit Wikipedia for money
2 August 2020

Trying to find COI or paid editors? Just read the news
28 June 2020

Automatic detection of covert paid editing; Wiki Workshop 2020
31 May 2020

2019 Picture of the Year, 200 French paid editing accounts blocked, 10 years of Guild Copyediting
31 May 2020

English Wikipedia community's conclusions on talk pages
30 April 2019

Women's history month
31 March 2019

Court-ordered article redaction, paid editing, and rock stars
1 December 2018

Kalanick's nipples; Episode #138 of Drama on the Hill
23 June 2017

Massive paid editing network unearthed on the English Wikipedia
2 September 2015

Orangemoody sockpuppet case sparks widespread coverage
2 September 2015

Paid editing; traffic drop; Nicki Minaj
12 August 2015

Community voices on paid editing
12 August 2015

On paid editing and advocacy: when the Bright Line fails to shine, and what we can do about it
15 July 2015

Turkish Wikipedia censorship; "Can Wikipedia survive?"; PR editing
24 June 2015

A quick way of becoming an admin
17 June 2015

Meet a paid editor
4 March 2015

Is Wikipedia for sale?
4 February 2015

Shifting values in the paid content debate; cross-language bot detection
30 July 2014

With paid advocacy in its sights, the Wikimedia Foundation amends their terms of use
18 June 2014

Does Wikipedia Pay? The Moderator: William Beutler
11 June 2014

PR agencies commit to ethical interactions with Wikipedia
11 June 2014

Should Wikimedia modify its terms of use to require disclosure?
26 February 2014

Foundation takes aim at undisclosed paid editing; Greek Wikipedia editor faces down legal challenge
19 February 2014

Special report: Contesting contests
29 January 2014

WMF employee forced out over "paid advocacy editing"
8 January 2014

Foundation to Wiki-PR: cease and desist; Arbitration Committee elections starting
20 November 2013

More discussion of paid advocacy, upcoming arbitrator elections, research hackathon, and more
23 October 2013

Vice on Wiki-PR's paid advocacy; Featured list elections begin
16 October 2013

Ada Lovelace Day, paid advocacy on Wikipedia, sidebar update, and more
16 October 2013

Wiki-PR's extensive network of clandestine paid advocacy exposed
9 October 2013

Q&A on Public Relations and Wikipedia
25 September 2013

PR firm accused of editing Wikipedia for government clients; can Wikipedia predict the stock market?
13 May 2013

Court ruling complicates the paid-editing debate
12 November 2012

Does Wikipedia Pay? The Founder: Jimmy Wales
1 October 2012

Does Wikipedia pay? The skeptic: Orange Mike
23 July 2012

Does Wikipedia Pay? The Communicator: Phil Gomes
7 May 2012

Does Wikipedia Pay? The Consultant: Pete Forsyth
30 April 2012

Showdown as featured article writer openly solicits commercial opportunities
30 April 2012

Does Wikipedia Pay? The Facilitator: Silver seren
16 April 2012

Wikimedia announcements, Wikipedia advertising, and more!
26 April 2010

License update, Google Translate, GLAM conference, Paid editing
15 June 2009

Report of diploma mill offering pay for edits
12 March 2007

AstroTurf PR firm discovered astroturfing
5 February 2007

Account used to create paid corporate entries shut down
9 October 2006

Editing for hire leads to intervention
14 August 2006

Proposal to pay editors for contributions
24 April 2006

German Wikipedia introduces incentive scheme
18 July 2005

The Atlantic examined "The Covert World of People Trying to Edit Wikipedia—for Pay".

The article first discusses medical editing and the experiences of Dr. James Heilman (Doc James), a Canadian physician who is currently on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. (Heilman discussed his opinions on paid editing in a Signpost op-ed earlier this year.) In 2013, Heilman was editing the Wikipedia article for kyphoplasty, a popular back procedure of disputed effectiveness. When Heilman reverted changes to the article that he thought were not "supported by existing research", he found himself drawn into a contentious debate with employees of Medtronic, a medical equipment company which sells a kyphoplasty kit. He was emailed by a physician who was a consultant for Medtronic and the resulting email thread was cc:ed to over 300 others, including one of Heilman's medical school professors. Heilman was intimidated by the contact. Elsewhere, he wrote "having 'representatives' from an 28 billion USD company email 300 of your colleagues to inform them how misguided you are is disconcerting."

The Atlantic puts this incident in the context of the conflicts between the motivations of company employees and volunteer editors.

The Atlantic writes that these issues are exacerbated by the shrinking ranks of active editors, the small number of administrators, and the growing number of articles. Heilman told The Atlantic that undisclosed advocacy edits "often distract the core community of editors away from more important topics." The Atlantic notes that Wikipedia's wide reach makes these issues important ones. According to Wikipedia's medical articles likely have a larger readership than WebMD and are used by 50-70 percent of doctors. Wikipedia information has even turned up in medical books themselves. As recounted by Heilman in the Signpost earlier this year, Wikipedia was plagiarized by a contributor to an Oxford University Press medical textbook.

The Atlantic discusses what public relations companies are and are not doing. It mentions in passing the 2014 pledge by a number of PR firms to adhere to Wikipedia's terms of use by disclosing their conflict of interest. (William Beutler (WWB), a paid editor who spearheaded that effort and wrote an op-ed in the Signpost about paid editing last month, called that a "big missed opportunity".) Despite this, undisclosed advocacy editing persists, ranging from the high profile, such as this summer's Sunshine Sachs controversy (see previous Signpost coverage), to the low profile, like the abundant ads on Elance advertising the services of Wikipedia editors and even administrators. Patrick Taylor, one of the duo at the head of Wiki-PR, which was blocked from editing Wikipedia for operating an army of sockpuppets (see the Signpost's Wiki-PR series), told The Atlantic that "Undisclosed paid editing, especially on the part of the largest PR firms, is rampant on Wikipedia."

The Atlantic talked with two paid editors, Gregory Kohs, founder of MyWikiBiz and longtime Wikipedia critic, and Mike Wood, who runs Legalmorning. The Atlantic failed to note that both have been banned from Wikipedia for policy violations. Both refuse to disclose their advocacy editing and claimed to The Atlantic that they did so because of Jimmy Wales, an odd, self-serving justification. Wood said "As soon as Jimmy Wales adheres to Wikipedia guidelines, I will adhere to Wikipedia guidelines," though the only specific act of Wales cited by The Atlantic was Wales editing his own Wikipedia article back in 2005. (Aug. 11)

Wikipedia traffic from Google drops 250 million visits

The last three months of Wikipedia traffic, from the August 2015 WMF Metrics & Activities Meeting

Business Insider reports that Wikipedia traffic from the search engine Google has experienced a significant drop. It recounts analysis from a July 28 blog post by Roy Hinkins, head of search engine optimization for SimilarWeb, a web analytics company. Hinkins writes:

Business Insider speculates that the drop is due to Google's growing "preference for inserting its own content above the content of other non-Google web sites, even when those sites may be better resources than Google itself", though it notes " there is no evidence that Wikipedia's traffic loss is due to Google".

The drop in traffic was noted at the Wikimedia Foundation August Metrics & Activities meeting (see graphic at right), though the meeting did not discuss a potential cause. Elsewhere, a number of experienced editors are attributing the drop to the normal summer decrease in Wikipedia traffic. (Aug. 12)

Nicki Minaj complains about her boyfriend's Wikipedia article

Nicki Minaj is displeased

Music news outlets noted that singer Nicki Minaj took to Instagram, where she has 31.2 million followers, to complain about the Wikipedia article for her boyfriend, rapper Meek Mill. Whenever she posted Mill's birth name, Rihmeek, she was inundated with complaints and mockery on social media for "misspelling" his name, because his Wikipedia article spelled it "Rahmeek". She posted a picture of herself with Mill and his family and wrote:

Neither Minaj nor the media outlets noted that the incorrect spelling in Meek's Wikipedia article was cited to a biography page on the website of his own record label, Roc Nation, where the error remains. (Aug. 8)

Editor's note: Emoticons in the above quote may not be visible on all computers.

Peter Dinklage is amused



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