6 ms·

This should be fixed the old-fashioned way: By cutting off teh flow of money at the source. When clients are caught directly or indirectly using sock-puppetry a

This should be fixed the old-fashioned way: By cutting off teh flow of money at the source. When clients are caught directly or indirectly using sock-puppetry and astroturfing on Wikipedia, banners should be added to the affected pages naming and shaming the clients. "This page has been locked by Wikipedia in response to deceptive practices paid for by Engulf and Devour to circumvent our community standards and mislead readers." If you want this to stop, you have to give the clients a disincentive. That will drive the good clients out and these firms will be left with erectile dysfunction flim-flam as their market.

candybar 13y ago
This goes into libel territory - Wikipedia presumably doesn't have the resources or authority to investigate and fully ascertain who paid for what.
- asperous 13y ago
  That's why it's important to have a 3rd party publish the rumor first, then they can cite that and pass the literary libel liability laterally.
  - 0xndc 13y ago
    Citogenesis.
  - dlitz 13y ago
    I don't think the law of libel works that way.
    - asperous 13y ago
      "Congress specifically enacted 47 U.S.C. § 230 (1996) to reverse the Prodigy findings and to provide for private blocking and screening of offensive material. § 230(c) states "that no provider or user of an interactive computer shall be treated as a publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider," thereby providing forums immunity for statements provided by third parties." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law
      - dlitz 13y ago
        47 U.S.C. § 230 (1996) basically covers online forums from being responsible for what other people post on those forums. From what I can tell, it doesn't necessarily protect a person who uses one of those forums to post libelous claims, just because that person cites another source. Arguably, the law could be read that way, but I would be surprised if the courts actually interpreted the immunity as broadly as you're describing it---that would pretty much gut libel law altogether. Do you have any case law to support your interpretation?
        asperous 13y ago
        Yes. I should say that the law is specific for users of an interactive computer. "arguing that only the originator of a defamatory statement published on the internet could be held liable.[4][9][10][11]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_v._Rosenthal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_v._Rosenthal
chris_wot 13y ago
Except that would violate their policy of presenting information in as neutral manner as possible. It's also hard to see where this would stop: banners for Exxon stating they ruin the environment, a banner on the NSA article stating they violate civil rights?
- Ma8ee 13y ago
  As long as it is the truth and no relevant facts are left out, it is still neutral. There is this strange notion in the US today that "neutral" means "doesn't upset or offend anyone". Or that neutral means "both sides get equal weights". If some corporation pays for getting their articles edited, then it is still a neutral fact that that was what they did, even if it upsets someone at the corporation that the truth comes out.
  - tedunangst 13y ago
    Putting some facts in a special banner doesn't strike me as neutral. Sounds more like special treatment.
  - chris_wot 13y ago
    Which means that you don't understand the concept at all. Wikipedia is neutral because it doesn't hold to a particular position. "The NSA violates civil rights" is not a position that Wikipedia holds because it cannot hold a particular position in regards to this organization. Sure, it can state facts, but it will have to source the information that the NSA violates civil rights to a third party. This is not to say that all sides must be held to have equal weight. Flat earthers should only get a passing mention on the article about the curvature of the earth, though they should be mentioned. Breathinarianism should be barely mentioned in an article on human health. I've found, when I was working on contentious articles on Wikipedia (all those many years ago now!), that neutrality always highlighted extreme views and held them to the light of day - they seemed, if anything, more bizarre and absurd when presented in a neutral manner. That's really why Scientologists hate Wikipedia, IMO.
    - Ma8ee 13y ago
Amadou 13y ago
Great idea, as long as there is some mechanism to deal with joe-jobs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe-job https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe-job
- raganwald 13y ago
  Of course you have to have a mechanism. Running an online business of any kind, but most especially with user-generated content, requires an unending investment in forensics. It's no different for Wikipedia than it is for eBay or even Hacker News. Most of these companies would cease and desist after one politely worded but firm letter. If they were the victim in the case, they would probably provide money and/or resources to track down a rogue PR firm, an unethical competitor, disgruntled ex-employee, or miscellaneous vigilante whack-jobber. I don't think we need to get hysterical like some responders and assume that every corporation is out to do black bag jobs on each other. If they can spend a few bucks and get some easy astro-turfing, they will. If the penalties are such that it's not worth the bother, they won't.
ilamont 13y ago
Here's another idea: Remove questionable Wikipedia entries from the first page of search results. Could this be done algorithmically, or through the use of noindex attached to some trigger on Wikipedia's end?
- hansjorg 13y ago
  Not all PR efforts are aimed at increasing visibility.
  - chris_wot 13y ago
    Lol! Some are indeed designed to remove an article from the Google search results entirely!
mjn 13y ago
Occasionally it does make its way back into their article, but ideally in the same way anything else does: as a factual description of something that happened, cited to third-party sources. For example here's one [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Meehan#Wikipedia_editing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Meehan#Wikipedia_editing It's not supposed to be retaliation, though, so there's sometimes pushback from Wikipedians somewhat self-consciously worried that mentioning the Wikipedia controversy in the Wikipedia article is biasing towards too-meta an article. Ideally it should only be included if, in some hypothetical universe, a similar controversy not about Wikipedia (e.g. about Britannica payola) would also merit coverage in Wikipedia. But that hypothetical is sometimes difficult to answer. [1] More or less randomly selected from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies
- lambda 13y ago
  The question is whether the Wikipedia snowjob is itself notable enough to warrant inclusion in Wikipedia. Often some random internet debate or meme is not judged to be noteworthy enough for inclusion. Should someone hiring a PR firm to update their Wikipedia article count? I mean, if misleading PR is a topic that is generally discussed in the media about a firm that's one thing, but if fairly ordinary corporate PR efforts that just so happened to violate Wikipedia's neutrality policy, I'm not sure that that's all that notable amongst the many other things a company has done.
- btilly 13y ago
  Occasionally it does make its way back into their article, but ideally in the same way anything else does: as a factual description of something that happened, cited to third-party sources. That one gets fun. I occasionally look at my sisters' Wikipedia pages and laugh at the mistakes which I know about, which I can't fix because what is already there cites third party sources which were wrong, and I don't know of third party sources that have correct information. If I really cared I could get it fixed. (Just ask my sisters to make an unambiguous statement somewhere that I can quote.) But in the meantime I get a chuckle out of things like Wikipedia thinking that I don't exist...
vdaniuk 13y ago
Good goals, bad strategy. One simple thing will happen: company X competitors will astroturf Wikipedia posing as agents of company X. Company X gets punished and retaliates. After short period of time many pages include warnings that respective companies tried to manipulate the articles. And the cycle starts again.
math0ne 13y ago
How would you prove the company paid for the services? How would you stop other companies form paying people to get the tag on competing companies pages?
benologist 13y ago
Loads of articles are flagged as advertisements, questionable notability, conflicts of interest etc and all that happens is the page sits there with the notice for years and nobody cares. I think they should team up with Google and Apple and really hurt companies that shill, spam and link farm - app and search rankings. Then they should put a price on their heads.
dboat 13y ago
Unfortunately this approach could be used by unscrupulous businesses to permanently tarnish the reputation of their competition. I can agree with the sentiment, but you've got to be a bit cautious with these sorts of heavy-handed punishments.
wdr1 13y ago
> This should be fixed the old-fashioned way: By cutting off teh flow of money at the source. When clients are caught directly or indirectly using sock-puppetry and astroturfing on Wikipedia, banners should be added to the affected pages naming and shaming the clients. So, you're saying instead I would just hire these firms to edit the pages of my competitors?
- iand 13y ago
  You misunderstand. If you did that then your name would appear on the competitors pages as the funder of edits to that page.
belorn 13y ago
No need to. Block, remove and move on is the common way. It works. I don't see much difference in people trying to use Wikipedia to post spam, or people trying to use HN to post spam. Both is spam, both should get deleted, both should ban the users from posting more, and both do so. Having a large banner ontop of spam posts here that says "company X is trying to spam HN, get them!!!" would not actually improve my HN experience.
mercurial 13y ago
> This should be fixed the old-fashioned way Tar and feathers?
JumpCrisscross 13y ago
Why not start with the simpler option of a cease-and-desist letter? Sounds like there should be a legal mechanism for a U.S. website wanting a U.S. company to stop editing its user-generated content.

candybar 13y ago

This goes into libel territory - Wikipedia presumably doesn't have the resources or authority to investigate and fully ascertain who paid for what.

asperous 13y ago
That's why it's important to have a 3rd party publish the rumor first, then they can cite that and pass the literary libel liability laterally.
- 0xndc 13y ago
  Citogenesis.
- dlitz 13y ago
  I don't think the law of libel works that way.
  - asperous 13y ago
    "Congress specifically enacted 47 U.S.C. § 230 (1996) to reverse the Prodigy findings and to provide for private blocking and screening of offensive material. § 230(c) states "that no provider or user of an interactive computer shall be treated as a publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider," thereby providing forums immunity for statements provided by third parties." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law
    - dlitz 13y ago
      47 U.S.C. § 230 (1996) basically covers online forums from being responsible for what other people post on those forums. From what I can tell, it doesn't necessarily protect a person who uses one of those forums to post libelous claims, just because that person cites another source. Arguably, the law could be read that way, but I would be surprised if the courts actually interpreted the immunity as broadly as you're describing it---that would pretty much gut libel law altogether. Do you have any case law to support your interpretation?
      - asperous 13y ago
        Yes. I should say that the law is specific for users of an interactive computer. "arguing that only the originator of a defamatory statement published on the internet could be held liable.[4][9][10][11]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_v._Rosenthal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_v._Rosenthal

chris_wot 13y ago

Except that would violate their policy of presenting information in as neutral manner as possible. It's also hard to see where this would stop: banners for Exxon stating they ruin the environment, a banner on the NSA article stating they violate civil rights?

Ma8ee 13y ago
As long as it is the truth and no relevant facts are left out, it is still neutral. There is this strange notion in the US today that "neutral" means "doesn't upset or offend anyone". Or that neutral means "both sides get equal weights". If some corporation pays for getting their articles edited, then it is still a neutral fact that that was what they did, even if it upsets someone at the corporation that the truth comes out.
- tedunangst 13y ago
  Putting some facts in a special banner doesn't strike me as neutral. Sounds more like special treatment.
- chris_wot 13y ago
  Which means that you don't understand the concept at all. Wikipedia is neutral because it doesn't hold to a particular position. "The NSA violates civil rights" is not a position that Wikipedia holds because it cannot hold a particular position in regards to this organization. Sure, it can state facts, but it will have to source the information that the NSA violates civil rights to a third party. This is not to say that all sides must be held to have equal weight. Flat earthers should only get a passing mention on the article about the curvature of the earth, though they should be mentioned. Breathinarianism should be barely mentioned in an article on human health. I've found, when I was working on contentious articles on Wikipedia (all those many years ago now!), that neutrality always highlighted extreme views and held them to the light of day - they seemed, if anything, more bizarre and absurd when presented in a neutral manner. That's really why Scientologists hate Wikipedia, IMO.
  - Ma8ee 13y ago

Amadou 13y ago

Great idea, as long as there is some mechanism to deal with joe-jobs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe-job https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe-job

raganwald 13y ago
Of course you have to have a mechanism. Running an online business of any kind, but most especially with user-generated content, requires an unending investment in forensics. It's no different for Wikipedia than it is for eBay or even Hacker News. Most of these companies would cease and desist after one politely worded but firm letter. If they were the victim in the case, they would probably provide money and/or resources to track down a rogue PR firm, an unethical competitor, disgruntled ex-employee, or miscellaneous vigilante whack-jobber. I don't think we need to get hysterical like some responders and assume that every corporation is out to do black bag jobs on each other. If they can spend a few bucks and get some easy astro-turfing, they will. If the penalties are such that it's not worth the bother, they won't.

ilamont 13y ago

Here's another idea: Remove questionable Wikipedia entries from the first page of search results. Could this be done algorithmically, or through the use of noindex attached to some trigger on Wikipedia's end?

hansjorg 13y ago
Not all PR efforts are aimed at increasing visibility.
- chris_wot 13y ago
  Lol! Some are indeed designed to remove an article from the Google search results entirely!

mjn 13y ago

Occasionally it does make its way back into their article, but ideally in the same way anything else does: as a factual description of something that happened, cited to third-party sources. For example here's one [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Meehan#Wikipedia_editing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Meehan#Wikipedia_editing It's not supposed to be retaliation, though, so there's sometimes pushback from Wikipedians somewhat self-consciously worried that mentioning the Wikipedia controversy in the Wikipedia article is biasing towards too-meta an article. Ideally it should only be included if, in some hypothetical universe, a similar controversy not about Wikipedia (e.g. about Britannica payola) would also merit coverage in Wikipedia. But that hypothetical is sometimes difficult to answer. [1] More or less randomly selected from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies

lambda 13y ago
The question is whether the Wikipedia snowjob is itself notable enough to warrant inclusion in Wikipedia. Often some random internet debate or meme is not judged to be noteworthy enough for inclusion. Should someone hiring a PR firm to update their Wikipedia article count? I mean, if misleading PR is a topic that is generally discussed in the media about a firm that's one thing, but if fairly ordinary corporate PR efforts that just so happened to violate Wikipedia's neutrality policy, I'm not sure that that's all that notable amongst the many other things a company has done.
btilly 13y ago
Occasionally it does make its way back into their article, but ideally in the same way anything else does: as a factual description of something that happened, cited to third-party sources. That one gets fun. I occasionally look at my sisters' Wikipedia pages and laugh at the mistakes which I know about, which I can't fix because what is already there cites third party sources which were wrong, and I don't know of third party sources that have correct information. If I really cared I could get it fixed. (Just ask my sisters to make an unambiguous statement somewhere that I can quote.) But in the meantime I get a chuckle out of things like Wikipedia thinking that I don't exist...

vdaniuk 13y ago

Good goals, bad strategy. One simple thing will happen: company X competitors will astroturf Wikipedia posing as agents of company X. Company X gets punished and retaliates. After short period of time many pages include warnings that respective companies tried to manipulate the articles. And the cycle starts again.

math0ne 13y ago

How would you prove the company paid for the services? How would you stop other companies form paying people to get the tag on competing companies pages?

benologist 13y ago

Loads of articles are flagged as advertisements, questionable notability, conflicts of interest etc and all that happens is the page sits there with the notice for years and nobody cares. I think they should team up with Google and Apple and really hurt companies that shill, spam and link farm - app and search rankings. Then they should put a price on their heads.

dboat 13y ago

Unfortunately this approach could be used by unscrupulous businesses to permanently tarnish the reputation of their competition. I can agree with the sentiment, but you've got to be a bit cautious with these sorts of heavy-handed punishments.

wdr1 13y ago

> This should be fixed the old-fashioned way: By cutting off teh flow of money at the source. When clients are caught directly or indirectly using sock-puppetry and astroturfing on Wikipedia, banners should be added to the affected pages naming and shaming the clients. So, you're saying instead I would just hire these firms to edit the pages of my competitors?

iand 13y ago
You misunderstand. If you did that then your name would appear on the competitors pages as the funder of edits to that page.

belorn 13y ago

No need to. Block, remove and move on is the common way. It works. I don't see much difference in people trying to use Wikipedia to post spam, or people trying to use HN to post spam. Both is spam, both should get deleted, both should ban the users from posting more, and both do so. Having a large banner ontop of spam posts here that says "company X is trying to spam HN, get them!!!" would not actually improve my HN experience.

mercurial 13y ago

> This should be fixed the old-fashioned way Tar and feathers?

JumpCrisscross 13y ago

Why not start with the simpler option of a cease-and-desist letter? Sounds like there should be a legal mechanism for a U.S. website wanting a U.S. company to stop editing its user-generated content.