9 ms·

Corruption in Wikiland? Paid PR scandal erupts at Wikipedia

144 points by zalew 14y ago

monsterix 14y ago
Great reporting from Ms. Violet Blue. Have seen her grow from starting an interesting sex education blog with classy radio podcasts to reporting now on quality and integrity of open web properties. Kudos on that! Unfortunately paid PR (or corruption in top media properties), both in institutions of profit and non-profit, is a problem since time-immemorial. Containing corruption is one of the hardest problem to solve, and could become one of the main reasons to push people into believing machines more than people next-door. Hope Wikimedia corrects this soon. [Edited for spellings]
- tptacek 14y ago
  Strong disagree. Typically misleading article from Violet Blue aims more at stirring up controversy (and pageviews) than on reporting the boring specifics and context. Minimal (maybe no) original reporting. No quotes from sources. The primary sources --- available and searchable on the Internet --- are more informative. The very fact that you're left with the notion that WM has a "corruption problem" that needs to be corrected soon is evidence of the low quality of this article. WM may very well have a corruption problem, but Violet Blue hasn't reported it; just innuendo.
rhizome 14y ago
Not a problem. Find them and kick them out. The system works.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  The deeper problem is that such people are needed at all. Wikipedia is an example of revolution within the form[1] -- the concept of an openly editable wiki was silently replaced by an Editoriate who spend a lot of time on impenetrable internal politics. All the knobs and dials for the open wiki are still there. But the actual day to day operation of the machinery has long since been completely inverted. [1] The top link on Google for "revolution within the form" links to what appears to be a neo-nazi wiki. I don't even know what to say about that.
  - atdt 14y ago
    What's missing from the site that would make it open and inviting again?
    - jacques_chester 14y ago
      I think that shooing away the deletionists would be a great start. There's also an annoying culture of instant reversal for pretty much any change. The headline says: "improve me!". The small type says: "and some editor will undo it!"
      - zalew 14y ago
        AFAIR there are reversal bots, to prevent vandalism.
        jacques_chester 14y ago
        And that's a perfect example of what I mean. The problem is that it is no longer enough to be a subject-matter expert in order to contribute to Wikipedia. You need also to be a Wikipedia expert so you can navigate the hidden layers of bureaucracy to get a change in. Many actual experts notice a small mistake, correct it, then watch in amazement as their changes are reverted. Do they know why? No. Do they care why? They shouldn't have to. Most of them never come back, forever diminishing a) the pool of potential contributors and b) the potential total value of the knowledge in Wikipedia. The entire point of a wiki is minimal drag and minimal upfront commitment. The interface still promises that, but everything that happens after an edit shows that it's just the facade that remains.
        zalew 14y ago
        Wikipedia plays such a role in today's information access, that leaving it to 'the people' is simply impossible. In the end, Wiki is a powerful media, it's impossible not to acknowledge the potential huge profits of propaganda and advertising. If something is worth having, then it's worth cheating for. Sticking 2 cents into one of the most powerful sources of information on the internet is definitely worth it.
kijin 14y ago
> Wikipedia and alleged conflicts of interest are not known to be handled with practicality - or clarity. In a large organization/community, bad apples are unavoidable. What matters is how the organization/community deals with such cases as they come along. If what the article says about this rogue trustee is true, then he needs to be fired, and fired hard, to send a message to the rest of the organization and its many international branches. I can understand why Wikipedia the project generally does not want to make top-down changes, but Wikimedia the foundation needs strong leadership in order to avoid corruption among its ranks. With great power comes great responsibility, and it cannot be denied that Wiki[pm]edia has gained great power in today's world, whether intended or not. There must be rules. Those rules must be written down and enforced consistently. Yes, that will lead to bureaucracy, but bureaucracy tends to become necessary when your organization reaches a certain level of complexity. I'm not sure who (if anyone) is in charge of granting and revoking "Residence" status, but that person needs to be dealt with, too, and swiftly, and harshly, if the allegations have merit. "Paid PR" is a vague concept, but openly advertising profit-motivated wiki-editing services is clearly unacceptable by the cultural standards of Wikipedia. If the community can demonstrate that it can enforce discipline even upon its most highly esteemed members, there is no reason to suppose that this incident will be a net loss for Wiki[pm]edia in the long term. Fortunately, it shouldn't be too difficult to find out who made which edits.
- s_henry_paulson 14y ago
  Why would the person responsible for "residence" status need to be punished? How could they possibly be aware of any surreptitious side-deals that insiders might engage in? (i.e. untrikiwiki exists in the open, but there is no readily identifiable information as to the persons behind it)
  - kijin 14y ago
    Sorry, that was phrased badly. I meant that the community should punish the person who was granted the Residence status and misused it, not the person (or group) that granted it.
- bjourne 14y ago
matznerd 14y ago
There are crazy politics involved in editing Wikipedia articles and it really does take a lot of skill to know how to edit, format, and properly cite an article so that your changes do not get reversed or article deleted. The editors have tons of internal politics and personal reasons for removing articles. You really need someone who knows how to navigate the waters to get things done. People imagine that anyone can add or create articles, and while that's true on the surface, if you aren't a part of the community, it isn't really true.
- swang 14y ago
  If you want to manipulate articles, you definitely need a lot of knowledge about Wikipedia "rules" which you can cite to constantly revert edits based on some reason: (NPOV, as in maintaining a neutral point of view, WP:RUMOR, WP:BIO). It's definitely much easier to wear people down if you're someone who is always on Wikipedia. In fact you can further wear them down by getting into a "Revert War" with the conflicting author. Since after 3 reverts you risk getting temporarily banned on Wikipedia for revert warring, after the 3 reverts you have to go to some random committee page on Wikipedia to settle the dispute.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I don't think this is true either. I don't think you need to know WP:RUMOR or WP:BIO (it helps to know what NPOV is, but you don't need to "know" it). The most important rule of editing Wikipedia is probably unspoken: start small and watch how the community reacts. Adding content and getting it reverted isn't a demerit; it's only painful if you are attached to the content. If you're going to start editing WP by getting involved with high-traffic pages, make your first edits small enough that you won't be upset when they're reverted.
    - swang 14y ago
      I meant if you want to "control" an article and force other editors to have to fight you to get something put on Wikipedia. You just throw at them a whole bunch of WP (Wikipedia Policies), cite WP:BIO for controversial facts about public figures, or use WP:RUMOR, WP:NOTRS or WP:OR. Most people have no idea about what these mean and just give up.
oelmekki 14y ago
EDIT : nevermind, wrong assumption, see replies. I'm not sure there's a problem here. The article seems to imply the guy actually edited wikipedia home page to promote his client. For what I understand of how "did you know" section works, it's not the case : it's automatically collecting recent additions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Recent_additions/2012/August http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Recent_additions/2012...). It means that, worst case scenario, he only wrote a lot of new pages about Gibraltar. That's still an issue if those page are advertisement-like (which I did not checked if they are), but certainly not the same thing as spamming home page on purpose. Also, he may as well have respected neutrality guidelines when writing those articles (even if it's a hard task, if you earn money from the person you're writing about). The real problem is mostly : does others people have read those articles and checked them ? It's the good old wikipedia problem : only pages that attracts a lot of editors can be considered balanced enough, with or without PR, with or without money.
- twelvechairs 14y ago
  > For what I understand of how "did you know" section works, it's not the case : it's automatically collecting recent additions This is incorrect. New articles for 'did you know' have to be nominated, and go through a (somewhat opaque) review, approval and queue process - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Did_you_know#The_DYK_process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Did_you_know#The_DYK_...
  - makomk 14y ago
    What's more, if you follow the actual on-Wikipedia discussion of this, the person in question had been using his position on the English Wikipedia to push Gibraltar-related DYK entries through the review and approval process. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Potential_abuse_of_DYK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Pot...
- Gustomaximus 14y ago
  The article states he was using more than just the "did you know section" (see below) to promote his client. And given his position, I'd be pretty surprised if he didn't realise what his writing was doing on the front page. "Roger Bamkin ... 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."
rdzgtdsv 14y ago
He did nothing wrong. Mentions of Gibraltar were reviewed by third parties and not received special treatment. See voting at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template_talk:Did_you_know&oldid=513494545 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template_talk:Did_... . I've had my articles on main page DYK a few times, and of course I was interested in topics of those articles.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ilamont 14y ago
I don't think it's a big secret that certain Wikipedia entries -- particularly those for well-known people, companies, products, and institutions -- are manipulated by SEO and PR teams to get better ranking or link off to favored sources, or sanitized to remove uncomfortable information. Maybe it's time for Google to address the SEO problem from its end. If front-page SERPs are no longer guaranteed, the incentive to engage in these activities will be reduced.
- rsync 14y ago
  What it's time for is site operators to stop consuming SEO "services". It's disingenuous, parasitic crap - and always has been. It is a classic case of Jaron Laniers prediction that we will dumb ourselves down until the computers "pass" the turing test. You are giving up your choices and distinctions as a human being when you decide NOT to write what you want to write, but rather, write what the computer wants you to write.
tptacek 14y ago
Here's what seems to have happened. Wikipedia (that is, site parked at the domain name "wikipedia.org") is operated by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit called Wikimedia. Wikimedia pays ~$4MM/yr to its employees in salary; most (or at least a plurality) of those employees are tech. Wikimedia has a chapter in the UK (Wikimedia UK, or WMUK). WMUK is at least partly funded by "global" Wikimedia. Both Wikimedia and WMUK are managed by boards of trustees, who select foundation executives, help manage fundraising, write mission statements, and that kind of stuff. I don't know if either WMUK or Wikimedia compensates trustees (but trustees do have a voice in compensation for foundation staff). A trustee at WMUK, Roger Bamkin, is embroiled in a conflict-of-interest scandal. What seems to have happened is this: Bamkin created a project, QRPEDIA, which acts as a sort of QR-based Bit.ly for Wikipedia articles. This is a good thing. What it does is allow people to create QR codes that can be displayed on buildings and landmarks which, when snapped with a scanner, will take you to the associated Wikipedia page. This is as close to a good use for QR codes as I've ever heard, because the ugliness of the QR code here is offset by the value of a symbol pointing out that you're looking at a landmark. Good for Roger Bamkin. After conceiving of and executing QRPEDIA, Bamkin and a partner set out on a project to plaster QRPEDIA codes all over the UK county town of Monmouth, and in the process create a "Monmouthpedia". I'm not sure if either Bamkin or his associates were compensated for this project; as I understand it, the rationale for the project was to demonstrate the potential for QRPEDIA. Now here's where it gets sketchy. Bamkin gets involved with the government of Gibraltar (you know, at the tip of Spain) to repeat the Monmouthpedia. Bamkin, acting as a consultant to Gibraltar, creates a project plan to train residents of the area to contribute to Wikipedia and navigate the rules & policies of the site. Moreover, Bamkin arranges to nominate tens of articles about Gibraltar to the Wikipedia "DYK" section, which occupies a spot on the Wikipedia front page. And he's apparently done this for cash. In the ensuing, ferocious, immediate hooplah surrounding the discovery of this transgression, it's discovered that Max Klein, another Wikipedia veteran (remember, anybody in the world can be a "veteran"; just spend a couple years donking around editing the site) is running a consultancy advertising a service to help commercial clients get better coverage on Wikipedia. In addition to any other roles they might have served with WM/WP, Klein and Bamkin have also held roles as "Wikipedians in Residents"†. Residencies are grant-style sponsorships offered either by Wikimedia or by institutions to compensate editors for improving the encyclopedia. The thing you want to understand about residencies is that they are not like trusteeships or adminships or any other status symbol on Wikipedia; they're grants, usually offered by organizations outside of Wikimedia. For instance, Klein's paid residency was sponsored by the Online Computer Library Center, a nonprofit unaffiliated with Wikimedia. Wikimedia status surely does contribute to selection for residency, but the final say in who gets the residency is the sponsor's. Anyways. There are a couple things that strike me in this drama. 1. Wikimedia owns an excruciatingly valuable piece of the Internet. Wikipedia articles occupy the top of many extremely valuable Google SERPs. Wikimedia itself raises mid-8-figures funding yearly without appearing to break a sweat. The opportunity for corruption inside Wikimedia is obvious and large. 2. The big story we have about corruption today has little to do with Wikimedia global. An elected trustee built a model for compensated improvement of the encyclopedia that went beyond the pale. It's not good, but it also doesn't appear to be tolerated. But this is nothing like corruption scandals at other charities; "corruption at nonprofits" tends to involve the nonprofit spending contributor dollars to hire cronies as consultants. 3. Violet Blue did not discover this drama. One assumes she was tipped (Wikidrama being what it is). Either way: I've probably done as much "reporting" on the incident as she did at this point. That's because Wikipedia itself EXPLODED when contributors competing for DYK spots noticed what was happening. This, to me, looks like the system "working". 4. Take any other large charity --- say, the American Red Cross --- and try to get a handle on their organizational politics and day-to-day drama. Does any other 501(c) in the US of comparable size operate with anything resembling the transparency (for better or worse) than Wikimedia does? I'm not saying Wikimedia is "fully transparent". They clearly aren't and probably never will be. But neither are many other charities. I don't know what the ACLU or PIH does with its contributions or staffing or internal promotion plans or conflict of interest guidelines and am happy to support them anyways. † Here you start hearing the term "GLAM", which stands for Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums. GLAM is the Wikipedia project for doing outreach and joint projects with, well, GLAMs. GLAM is important to this story in part because it is, at least in the meager scale of Wikipedia --- remember, even the highest-status Wikipedians tend not to be, uh, globally competitive earners --- lucrative; libraries and museums tend to sponsor residencies.

144 points by zalew 14y ago

Great reporting from Ms. Violet Blue. Have seen her grow from starting an interesting sex education blog with classy radio podcasts to reporting now on quality and integrity of open web properties. Kudos on that! Unfortunately paid PR (or corruption in top media properties), both in institutions of profit and non-profit, is a problem since time-immemorial. Containing corruption is one of the hardest problem to solve, and could become one of the main reasons to push people into believing machines more than people next-door. Hope Wikimedia corrects this soon. [Edited for spellings]

tptacek 14y ago
Strong disagree. Typically misleading article from Violet Blue aims more at stirring up controversy (and pageviews) than on reporting the boring specifics and context. Minimal (maybe no) original reporting. No quotes from sources. The primary sources --- available and searchable on the Internet --- are more informative. The very fact that you're left with the notion that WM has a "corruption problem" that needs to be corrected soon is evidence of the low quality of this article. WM may very well have a corruption problem, but Violet Blue hasn't reported it; just innuendo.

rhizome 14y ago

Not a problem. Find them and kick them out. The system works.

jacques_chester 14y ago
The deeper problem is that such people are needed at all. Wikipedia is an example of revolution within the form[1] -- the concept of an openly editable wiki was silently replaced by an Editoriate who spend a lot of time on impenetrable internal politics. All the knobs and dials for the open wiki are still there. But the actual day to day operation of the machinery has long since been completely inverted. [1] The top link on Google for "revolution within the form" links to what appears to be a neo-nazi wiki. I don't even know what to say about that.
- atdt 14y ago
  What's missing from the site that would make it open and inviting again?
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    I think that shooing away the deletionists would be a great start. There's also an annoying culture of instant reversal for pretty much any change. The headline says: "improve me!". The small type says: "and some editor will undo it!"
    - zalew 14y ago
      AFAIR there are reversal bots, to prevent vandalism.
      - jacques_chester 14y ago
        And that's a perfect example of what I mean. The problem is that it is no longer enough to be a subject-matter expert in order to contribute to Wikipedia. You need also to be a Wikipedia expert so you can navigate the hidden layers of bureaucracy to get a change in. Many actual experts notice a small mistake, correct it, then watch in amazement as their changes are reverted. Do they know why? No. Do they care why? They shouldn't have to. Most of them never come back, forever diminishing a) the pool of potential contributors and b) the potential total value of the knowledge in Wikipedia. The entire point of a wiki is minimal drag and minimal upfront commitment. The interface still promises that, but everything that happens after an edit shows that it's just the facade that remains.
        zalew 14y ago
        Wikipedia plays such a role in today's information access, that leaving it to 'the people' is simply impossible. In the end, Wiki is a powerful media, it's impossible not to acknowledge the potential huge profits of propaganda and advertising. If something is worth having, then it's worth cheating for. Sticking 2 cents into one of the most powerful sources of information on the internet is definitely worth it.

kijin 14y ago

> Wikipedia and alleged conflicts of interest are not known to be handled with practicality - or clarity. In a large organization/community, bad apples are unavoidable. What matters is how the organization/community deals with such cases as they come along. If what the article says about this rogue trustee is true, then he needs to be fired, and fired hard, to send a message to the rest of the organization and its many international branches. I can understand why Wikipedia the project generally does not want to make top-down changes, but Wikimedia the foundation needs strong leadership in order to avoid corruption among its ranks. With great power comes great responsibility, and it cannot be denied that Wiki[pm]edia has gained great power in today's world, whether intended or not. There must be rules. Those rules must be written down and enforced consistently. Yes, that will lead to bureaucracy, but bureaucracy tends to become necessary when your organization reaches a certain level of complexity. I'm not sure who (if anyone) is in charge of granting and revoking "Residence" status, but that person needs to be dealt with, too, and swiftly, and harshly, if the allegations have merit. "Paid PR" is a vague concept, but openly advertising profit-motivated wiki-editing services is clearly unacceptable by the cultural standards of Wikipedia. If the community can demonstrate that it can enforce discipline even upon its most highly esteemed members, there is no reason to suppose that this incident will be a net loss for Wiki[pm]edia in the long term. Fortunately, it shouldn't be too difficult to find out who made which edits.

s_henry_paulson 14y ago
Why would the person responsible for "residence" status need to be punished? How could they possibly be aware of any surreptitious side-deals that insiders might engage in? (i.e. untrikiwiki exists in the open, but there is no readily identifiable information as to the persons behind it)
- kijin 14y ago
  Sorry, that was phrased badly. I meant that the community should punish the person who was granted the Residence status and misused it, not the person (or group) that granted it.
bjourne 14y ago

matznerd 14y ago

There are crazy politics involved in editing Wikipedia articles and it really does take a lot of skill to know how to edit, format, and properly cite an article so that your changes do not get reversed or article deleted. The editors have tons of internal politics and personal reasons for removing articles. You really need someone who knows how to navigate the waters to get things done. People imagine that anyone can add or create articles, and while that's true on the surface, if you aren't a part of the community, it isn't really true.

swang 14y ago
If you want to manipulate articles, you definitely need a lot of knowledge about Wikipedia "rules" which you can cite to constantly revert edits based on some reason: (NPOV, as in maintaining a neutral point of view, WP:RUMOR, WP:BIO). It's definitely much easier to wear people down if you're someone who is always on Wikipedia. In fact you can further wear them down by getting into a "Revert War" with the conflicting author. Since after 3 reverts you risk getting temporarily banned on Wikipedia for revert warring, after the 3 reverts you have to go to some random committee page on Wikipedia to settle the dispute.
- tptacek 14y ago
  I don't think this is true either. I don't think you need to know WP:RUMOR or WP:BIO (it helps to know what NPOV is, but you don't need to "know" it). The most important rule of editing Wikipedia is probably unspoken: start small and watch how the community reacts. Adding content and getting it reverted isn't a demerit; it's only painful if you are attached to the content. If you're going to start editing WP by getting involved with high-traffic pages, make your first edits small enough that you won't be upset when they're reverted.
  - swang 14y ago
    I meant if you want to "control" an article and force other editors to have to fight you to get something put on Wikipedia. You just throw at them a whole bunch of WP (Wikipedia Policies), cite WP:BIO for controversial facts about public figures, or use WP:RUMOR, WP:NOTRS or WP:OR. Most people have no idea about what these mean and just give up.

oelmekki 14y ago

EDIT : nevermind, wrong assumption, see replies. I'm not sure there's a problem here. The article seems to imply the guy actually edited wikipedia home page to promote his client. For what I understand of how "did you know" section works, it's not the case : it's automatically collecting recent additions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Recent_additions/2012/August http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Recent_additions/2012...). It means that, worst case scenario, he only wrote a lot of new pages about Gibraltar. That's still an issue if those page are advertisement-like (which I did not checked if they are), but certainly not the same thing as spamming home page on purpose. Also, he may as well have respected neutrality guidelines when writing those articles (even if it's a hard task, if you earn money from the person you're writing about). The real problem is mostly : does others people have read those articles and checked them ? It's the good old wikipedia problem : only pages that attracts a lot of editors can be considered balanced enough, with or without PR, with or without money.

twelvechairs 14y ago
> For what I understand of how "did you know" section works, it's not the case : it's automatically collecting recent additions This is incorrect. New articles for 'did you know' have to be nominated, and go through a (somewhat opaque) review, approval and queue process - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Did_you_know#The_DYK_process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Did_you_know#The_DYK_...
- makomk 14y ago
  What's more, if you follow the actual on-Wikipedia discussion of this, the person in question had been using his position on the English Wikipedia to push Gibraltar-related DYK entries through the review and approval process. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Potential_abuse_of_DYK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Pot...
Gustomaximus 14y ago
The article states he was using more than just the "did you know section" (see below) to promote his client. And given his position, I'd be pretty surprised if he didn't realise what his writing was doing on the front page. "Roger Bamkin ... 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."

rdzgtdsv 14y ago

He did nothing wrong. Mentions of Gibraltar were reviewed by third parties and not received special treatment. See voting at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template_talk:Did_you_know&oldid=513494545 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template_talk:Did_... . I've had my articles on main page DYK a few times, and of course I was interested in topics of those articles.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

ilamont 14y ago

I don't think it's a big secret that certain Wikipedia entries -- particularly those for well-known people, companies, products, and institutions -- are manipulated by SEO and PR teams to get better ranking or link off to favored sources, or sanitized to remove uncomfortable information. Maybe it's time for Google to address the SEO problem from its end. If front-page SERPs are no longer guaranteed, the incentive to engage in these activities will be reduced.

rsync 14y ago
What it's time for is site operators to stop consuming SEO "services". It's disingenuous, parasitic crap - and always has been. It is a classic case of Jaron Laniers prediction that we will dumb ourselves down until the computers "pass" the turing test. You are giving up your choices and distinctions as a human being when you decide NOT to write what you want to write, but rather, write what the computer wants you to write.

tptacek 14y ago

Here's what seems to have happened. Wikipedia (that is, site parked at the domain name "wikipedia.org") is operated by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit called Wikimedia. Wikimedia pays ~$4MM/yr to its employees in salary; most (or at least a plurality) of those employees are tech. Wikimedia has a chapter in the UK (Wikimedia UK, or WMUK). WMUK is at least partly funded by "global" Wikimedia. Both Wikimedia and WMUK are managed by boards of trustees, who select foundation executives, help manage fundraising, write mission statements, and that kind of stuff. I don't know if either WMUK or Wikimedia compensates trustees (but trustees do have a voice in compensation for foundation staff). A trustee at WMUK, Roger Bamkin, is embroiled in a conflict-of-interest scandal. What seems to have happened is this: Bamkin created a project, QRPEDIA, which acts as a sort of QR-based Bit.ly for Wikipedia articles. This is a good thing. What it does is allow people to create QR codes that can be displayed on buildings and landmarks which, when snapped with a scanner, will take you to the associated Wikipedia page. This is as close to a good use for QR codes as I've ever heard, because the ugliness of the QR code here is offset by the value of a symbol pointing out that you're looking at a landmark. Good for Roger Bamkin. After conceiving of and executing QRPEDIA, Bamkin and a partner set out on a project to plaster QRPEDIA codes all over the UK county town of Monmouth, and in the process create a "Monmouthpedia". I'm not sure if either Bamkin or his associates were compensated for this project; as I understand it, the rationale for the project was to demonstrate the potential for QRPEDIA. Now here's where it gets sketchy. Bamkin gets involved with the government of Gibraltar (you know, at the tip of Spain) to repeat the Monmouthpedia. Bamkin, acting as a consultant to Gibraltar, creates a project plan to train residents of the area to contribute to Wikipedia and navigate the rules & policies of the site. Moreover, Bamkin arranges to nominate tens of articles about Gibraltar to the Wikipedia "DYK" section, which occupies a spot on the Wikipedia front page. And he's apparently done this for cash. In the ensuing, ferocious, immediate hooplah surrounding the discovery of this transgression, it's discovered that Max Klein, another Wikipedia veteran (remember, anybody in the world can be a "veteran"; just spend a couple years donking around editing the site) is running a consultancy advertising a service to help commercial clients get better coverage on Wikipedia. In addition to any other roles they might have served with WM/WP, Klein and Bamkin have also held roles as "Wikipedians in Residents"†. Residencies are grant-style sponsorships offered either by Wikimedia or by institutions to compensate editors for improving the encyclopedia. The thing you want to understand about residencies is that they are not like trusteeships or adminships or any other status symbol on Wikipedia; they're grants, usually offered by organizations outside of Wikimedia. For instance, Klein's paid residency was sponsored by the Online Computer Library Center, a nonprofit unaffiliated with Wikimedia. Wikimedia status surely does contribute to selection for residency, but the final say in who gets the residency is the sponsor's. Anyways. There are a couple things that strike me in this drama. 1. Wikimedia owns an excruciatingly valuable piece of the Internet. Wikipedia articles occupy the top of many extremely valuable Google SERPs. Wikimedia itself raises mid-8-figures funding yearly without appearing to break a sweat. The opportunity for corruption inside Wikimedia is obvious and large. 2. The big story we have about corruption today has little to do with Wikimedia global. An elected trustee built a model for compensated improvement of the encyclopedia that went beyond the pale. It's not good, but it also doesn't appear to be tolerated. But this is nothing like corruption scandals at other charities; "corruption at nonprofits" tends to involve the nonprofit spending contributor dollars to hire cronies as consultants. 3. Violet Blue did not discover this drama. One assumes she was tipped (Wikidrama being what it is). Either way: I've probably done as much "reporting" on the incident as she did at this point. That's because Wikipedia itself EXPLODED when contributors competing for DYK spots noticed what was happening. This, to me, looks like the system "working". 4. Take any other large charity --- say, the American Red Cross --- and try to get a handle on their organizational politics and day-to-day drama. Does any other 501(c) in the US of comparable size operate with anything resembling the transparency (for better or worse) than Wikimedia does? I'm not saying Wikimedia is "fully transparent". They clearly aren't and probably never will be. But neither are many other charities. I don't know what the ACLU or PIH does with its contributions or staffing or internal promotion plans or conflict of interest guidelines and am happy to support them anyways. † Here you start hearing the term "GLAM", which stands for Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums. GLAM is the Wikipedia project for doing outreach and joint projects with, well, GLAMs. GLAM is important to this story in part because it is, at least in the meager scale of Wikipedia --- remember, even the highest-status Wikipedians tend not to be, uh, globally competitive earners --- lucrative; libraries and museums tend to sponsor residencies.