Talk:Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia

Companies have argued for leeway with "ignore all rules"

@SlimVirgin: This text:

Companies have argued for greater leeway in conflict-of-interest editing, citing Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, a policy, which states: "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it."

References

was just deleted as unsourced. You last revised it here. Do you have a better source? I wouldn't be surprised if it is true. --David Tornheim (talk) 22:13, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

@TeleComNasSprVen: You added the original text here. Do you have a source? --David Tornheim (talk) 22:26, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

David, that edit of mine you linked to was just a light copy edit. I may not have looked at the source. As for the source, it said at the time (February 2014): "Wikipedia's de-facto ban on paid editing is universally ignored. In a recent study conducted by the Public Relations Society of America, 40% of PR professionals admitted to having edited Wikipedia. It amounts to over a quarter of million of PR pros who take refuge in the Wikipedia’s "Ignore All Rules" policy which says: 'If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.'" [1] I don't know whether source still says that or how it should be interpreted. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:34, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin: Thanks for the response. It seems likes something from that quote belongs in the main text--with mention of date. --David Tornheim (talk) 04:56, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Chiming in since I'm the one who deleted this text. Technically my edit summary used the phrase "poorly sourced", not "unsourced". What I meant was that I don't think that WikiExperts FAQ page is WP:RELIABLE for the purposes of verifying the claim that companies have cited WP:IAR in arguing for greater leeway in COI editing. It's an FAQ page on the website of a company that does paid Wikipedia editing - it's going to be coming at the issue with a heavy bias, and it basically falls under WP:SPS. I'd be okay with including the statement if it could be supported by a reliable, independent source. Or the WikiExperts source could potentially be used to support a weaker claim like "WikiExperts, a company that offers paid editing services, despite being banned for undisclosed paid editing, has justified its methods by citing Wikipedia:Ignore all rules which says blah blah". But I think that's giving WP:UNDUE weight to a passing comment made by one specific company in an FAQ. Colin M (talk) 15:41, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Parque da guarita pedra sul.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:24, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Now NBC on the Weinstein Scandal:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/ronan-farrow-overcame-spies-and-intimidation-to-break-some-of-the-biggest-stories-of-the-me-too-era/2019/10/10/9cc46c9a-eac1-11e9-85c0-85a098e47b37_story.html

"Interestingly, NBC doesn’t dispute one of Farrow’s scoops, a minor one but telling nonetheless. In the wake of the Weinstein imbroglio, he writes, the network hired a “Wikipedia whitewasher” to scrub references to the episode from some of its pages, a curious decision for a news organization dedicated to transparency. To this day, there’s no reference to the Weinstein affair under Oppenheim’s Wikipedia entry, and only a fleeting one in Lack’s."

Also:

https://www.newsweek.com/nbc-wikipedia-whitewashing-matt-lauer-weinstein-ronan-farrow-1464118

Ocaasi ^{t | c} 08:26, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Where to report companies?

I just got a letter from a company offering to make a Wikipedia page for me, stating

We own multiple accounts on Wikipedia with page curation and new page reviewer rights, so we can create and moderate pages with almost zero risk of another mod taking it down.

Where do I report companies like this? That should be a section in this article. --WiseWoman (talk) 20:57, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

@WiseWoman: per our reader focus, we shouldn't link from mainspace to WP-space, but it'd absolutely be a good idea to add a header to this talk page directing there; I'll whip that up. To answer your question, you're looking for Wikipedia:COI noticeboard. Sdkb (talk) 22:12, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

"Paid advoacy" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Paid advoacy. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 August 24#Paid advoacy until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Hog Farm _Talk 18:04, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

New Haaretz

Noting that this article [2] makes some comments on the topic in general, may be good for some content. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:24, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

WikiScanner - too many examples?

As above, really. Do we really need three lines of nothing but examples? Couruu (talk) 08:04, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Why not? They're all well sourced and demonstrate the extensive misuse of Wikipedia across dozens of industries and corporate/political leaders. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 09:11, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I think a sentence like "extensive misuse of Wikipedia across dozens of industries and corporate/political leaders" with a few examples would read better than a single comma-separated sentence of 49. The full list can be (and currently isn't) listed in the WikiScanner article. Belbury (talk) 10:47, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

@Belbury +1 on this. If the entire list needs to remain, I'd vote for moving it to WikiScanner. Couruu (talk) 11:15, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Well, moving it to Wikiscanner is a nice solution. Ok... let's just keep some examples from the more prominent and diverse names in this article (fewer than 10, but I'll leave it to you!) Ocaasi ^{t | c} 12:54, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Sounds like a good plan to me, but it doesn't seem to have gotten done. This isn't my sort of topic area, so I'm not sure I would do it in cases I bollixed something up.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:58, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

"WikiProject Integrity" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect WikiProject Integrity has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 October 11 § WikiProject Integrity until a consensus is reached. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 22:43, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

"WikiProject Integrity"

We're "tracking", if you will, something called "WikProject Cooperation", but it is defunct. It seems to have been replaced by Wikipedia:WikiProject Integrity, but this article no longer has any information about or even mention of it. It presumably did earlier, because in the above-mentioned RfD about the cross-namespace WikiProject Integrity redirect, the nominator linked explicitly to Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia#WikiProject Cooperation and WikiProject Integrity, a heading that has since been renamed (without an anchor for the original name) to #WikiProject Cooperation. I would think that the material should be restored or new material written, so that those with an interest in the CoI stuff know it exists and has taken over (doing whatever it is doing) where WikiProject Cooperation left off.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:57, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Request Edit

I have a conflict of interest as an employee of WhiteHatWiki, which was written about on this page. I'd like to request the removal of a serious fabrication on this page.

In the subsection Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia#2020s 2, in the section Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia#Miscellaneous, the editor fabricates that a story in The Oregonian says that WhiteHatWiki was hired to edit a page about a city council person in order to justify inclusion of the event on this page.

The story is about whether city funds were properly used by a council member to hire a firm to advise them on how to make request edits on Wikipeda. The story specifies the request edits on the Talk page were made by a staff member of the city council person and it provides a hyperlink to the relevant Talk page, which shows the staff member disclosed they worked with the council member. The story emphatically does not say that WhiteHatWiki was hired to edit the page about the council person. The story goes into detail describing how of 8 edit requests that were submitted by the council staff member, 4 approved by a Wikipedia editor reviewing the requests. The council person's staff was also adamant in the article that it was a proper to hire a a consultant to educate their staff on how to combat distortions on Wikipedia.

Only the fabrication that WhiteHatWiki was hired to directly edit the council person's page justifies its placement in this section. Every other example in this section is of undisclosed COI editing.

Here is the full text of the article in The Oregonian in a free version: [3] The editor used a citation to a pay-walled version, making it impossible for non-subscribers to find the fabrication.

Please remove:

On August 7, 2024, The Oregonian reported that Rene Gonzalez spent $6,400 of city taxpayer dollars to hire a contractor, WhiteHatWiki, to make edits to the Portland city commissioner's Wikipedia page in an effort to "spruce up his profile" as part of his mayoral bid.

Here's what it says in the passages relevant to WhiteHatWiki's involvement:

Gonzalez’s office at City Hall hired a New York-based company in March to develop a handful of requested edits to the Wikipedia page and also train a “designee” on the submission process, records obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive through a public records request show.

The contractor, WhiteHatWiki, ultimately helped craft eight requested edits, confirmed Shah Smith, Gonzalez’s chief of staff. Smith offered a full-throated defense of the city-funded service in a statement Wednesday.

....A Gonzalez staffer submitted the proposed changes to Wikipedia on June 25, according to an edit history published on the website and the commissioner’s office. Only four of the eight requested changes were ultimately approved by a volunteer editor who works under the username Rusalkii.

BC1278 (talk) 18:54, 16 October 2024 (UTC)