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"paying absolutely while collaborating with wikipedia" Collaborating my ass. Not to give these guys a pass, at all — this is some seriously skeezy marketing —
by mindgam3 7y ago
"paying absolutely while collaborating with wikipedia"
Collaborating my ass.
Not to give these guys a pass, at all — this is some seriously skeezy marketing — but I think this underscores a deeper issue of paid accounts on Wikipedia, which is totally a thing as I found out recently. Apparently there people, or maybe a whole ecosystem, who are essentially lobbyists who get paid to edit Wikipedia pages, and that's okay, as long as they mark that they're a paid account, or something.
I guess if you follow Wikipedia's rules for paid accounts, it's okay to update pages in favor of your brand?
- proxygeek 7y agoDidn't even know paid accounts are a thing at Wikipedia! Wow...
- geezerjay 7y agoWikipedia is routinely manipulated to promote corporations and individuals. It's no surprise that some of the people engaged in this sort of practice are paid to work exclusively. In fact, I peronally know a case where congress promoters had among their marketing strategy creating and maintaining wikipedia pages that helped them promote their event.
- Piskvorrr 7y agoThe name is rather unfortunate, even misleading - there is not a paid account in the sense "you pay Wikipedia to get perks"; rather "a third-party company pays you to edit Wikipedia in their favour".
- pergadad 7y agoThis seems to me a "least bad option" case. The alternative is that they'll do it without showing their colours, so you won't even know that it's a possibly biased edit. Corporations are also frequently under attack on Wikipedia, so that they want to do some kind of reputation management is quite understandable. Better they do that openly and have to be clear in their intentions, than that it's hidden.