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Posted by: Ottava

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9518531/RJ-Ellory-fake-book-reviews-are-rife-on-internet-authors-warn.html about fake book reviews is deeply intertwined with the problems rife on Wikipedia - lots of internet sources that are either produced way too fast (and thus not yet corrected), things rushed and not based on full information, or on shoddy merits.

This is one of the dangers with people who boast about "Web 2.0" (that isn't even a real thing, there is either the internet or not, screw the rest of it). When anonymity dominates and there is no check, crap takes over.

Posted by: Eppur si muove

And just like on Wikipedia, meatpuppetry is also a problem. A friend fo mine found a book that plagiarised his website and also Wikipedia. One of the positive reviews of the book was written by a colleague of the "author" who appears in the acknowledgments. Said work colleague has blogged about plagiarism but his scruples about that do not apply when recommending a friend's book.

Posted by: Ottava

Adam Smith suggested that the reason why 18th century poets formed cabals to destroy each other and that scientists did not is because the poets had far more to gain and lose. The people didn't really care about the scientists and it was immune.

If you look closely, he had a strong point about human nature. When you can gain popularity/power/money, or whatever else, humans tend to join together to screw each other in any way possible. It no longer becomes merit but greed. I strongly believe in Confucius's meritocracy. However, Confucius was consistently chased out of different kingdoms because of how it prevented certain people from gaining power who do not deserve it.

Posted by: DoctorHver

I thought wikipedia was the playground for copyright in-fragments and plagiarism.