Astroturf/wikiturf Options

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This post has been edited by Joey: Sun 15th October 2006, 6:30pm

[Somey]

One thing that's increasingly noticeable is the way companies are trying to move negative content about themselves into "Criticism of..." articles, simply to make it harder for people to find it - the assumption being that once the person has the little factoid they're looking for, they won't bother with any further clicks or page views. There was a thread on Wiki-EN-L last month about it:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien...uly/051130.html

The Wikipedia people have to understand that professional marketing strategists and campaign managers are very, very smart people, and they won't give up easily - this is, after all, their paying job. The general Wikipedian tendency toward arrogance and dismissiveness is not going to help them with this problem - they're going to have to get creative, and they're going to have to be much better trend-spotters than they have been up to this point.

Then again, maybe the world's marketing people will all just suddenly stop and declare Wikipedia off limits, just to be nice. Who knows? Anything can happen... well, probably not that.

[Wikiturf]

A friend referred me here after I told him my story about wikiturf.

I was trying to edit an article about corporation to include criticism. The stub article was nothing more than a marketing document from a corporate employee. There were many other employees, and perhaps some PR hired guns, "guarding" the article. Originally there were several people trying to keep the criticism section in the article, but there were eventually worn down: the PR people figured out that they just need several people working on the article to get around the 3 revert rule. Once I was the only one left, I couldn't do anything without running afoul of 3RR.

Another thing I objected to was the Info Box. Since it has the corporate logo at the top and the contents are set by people with business interests, info boxes are nothing more than advertisements on the page - and the ads get prominent placement.

The worst part of my story is I eventually attracted a stalker: someone who sat on my Contributions page and reversed whatever I did wherever I went. He repeatedly vandalised my user page and posted personal information about me. I couldn't get admins to help me. And of course the PR people were just enjoying the fact the crazy guy was doing all the work for him. I was eventually worn down, too, and for the time being the Wikipedia entry has just been abandoned to the corporate flaks. I believe they have Wikipedia's blessing, or admins would have stepped in to make sure the last remaining non-corporate contributor would continue to edit the article. Instead they all but laid out the red carpet for Wikiturf.

I've wanted to write about this for a long time, but I know I would be presumed to be biased when it comes to the article I was working on. Instead I would like to find people to work with to paint a larger picture of the problem of Wikiturf.

Ps. My friend also pointed out this example from Nestle PR: http://listics.com/20060715380

Maybe people could paste other known examples in this thread?

Ps. I just read the Wal-Mart example, and that sounds like exactly what I'm talking about. There's a big difference between negotiated consensus and bullying. Basically, the bullies don't have to negotiate. There should be a way of enforcing negotiation with a minority opinion.

This post has been edited by Wikiturf: Wed 9th August 2006, 2:55am

[EuroSceptic]

Wikipedia matures, I would do the same thing. In a year or what time, wikipedia is just the next "advertise your compagny" with legions of POV pushers trying to keep the 'correct' info in the article....

This post has been edited by EuroSceptic: Wed 9th August 2006, 1:17pm

[Wikiturf]

I was hoping to get a list of known wikiturfing companies here, but this doesn't seem to be working. I see corporations paying for wikiturf to be even more of a problem than the astroturfing in forums and blog comments because so many people link to Wikipedia.

I want to raise awareness that when people link to corporate entries they are linking to pages maintained by PR departments, and they are helping corporations "shape perceptions." The real shame of this is that Wikipedia should have been an "alternative" institution - built on public knowledge rather than an organizational agenda. However, as it gets taken over by wikiturf, Wikipedia becomes just another instrument for mainstream institutions that can afford Big PR war rooms.

Does anyone have any suggestions about a more effective way I could pursue this?

[Somey]

...Wikipedia should have been an "alternative" institution - built on public knowledge rather than an organizational agenda. However, as it gets taken over by wikiturf, Wikipedia becomes just another instrument for mainstream institutions that can afford Big PR war rooms. ... Does anyone have any suggestions about a more effective way I could pursue this?

I don't know if you believe him/them or not, but Jimbo & Co. claim to be "strongly" against this sort of thing, at least publicly:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien...ust/052394.html

I'm sure there will be any number of idealistic people willing to take up the banner of preventing corporate colonization of Wikipedia, but let's face it - if you're a Wikiaddict, even if you're not an admin, and someone offers you money, let alone a well-paying job to help them "tell the unbiased truth about" their corporation, a lot of these people are just going to take the cash. It's not like they have to tell anyone, and in most cases nobody knows who they really are anyway.

I agree with you, though... I believe this represents the beginning of the "end-game," where it will become clear to the cyberworld that Wikipedia isn't any more immune to market forces than anything else. Money changes everything, after all.

[Wikiturf]

Jimbo & Co. claim to be "strongly" against this sort of thing, at least publicly

This is bull. No one did anything about the corporate involvement with the article I was working on. IMHO, they subtly encouraged not only the PR but the use of nasty tactics against anyone who opposed them. I was stalked and harassed all over Wikipedia by a crazy person who freely vandalized my user page. While I doubt this person was associated with the PR firm, he was encouraged by the corporate people, and the admins would do nothing.

While Jimbo isn't doing anything, I think a good start would be to create a list of at-risk-of-wikiturf articles. If there were legions of editors willing to check in with these articles, it might provide some balance from the paid PR teams.

I think the best policy would be to ban articles about current businesses as unencyclopedic, though. Is the Info Box stats for Acme Widgets really bubbling up from the people?

[Wikiturf]

By the way, the username of the crazy person was "Midgley" - and I wasn't the only one he harassed. In fact I became a target because I tried to help someone else out (after he stole her ID and misbehaved to make her look like a troll). I'm sure most people who did what he did would have been rapidly, permanently banned. However, he was helping the corporate and PR bloggers, so he got a lot of support. I was thoroughly worn down after a month of trying to deal with him.

[Somey]

By the way, the username of the crazy person was "Midgley" - and I wasn't the only one he harassed.

Is this related to the Anti-Vaccinologist article, then? That would make sense based on your earlier postings, given that one of the main arguments against compulsory vaccinations is that such policies are basically a blank check for pharmaceutical companies. (That doesn't mean I'm particularly sympathetic to those views, of course...)

I agree that Jimbo's pronouncements about trying to avoid the perception of pro-corporate bias are essentially worthless, though... I only mentioned them because you could at least use them to prove the hypocrisy, not that they would ever admit that you could prove anything they didn't want you to. It's just more of the same cynical posturing we've come to expect, since the question is largely academic at this point. There will be corporate PR departments and firms staking out territory on Wikipedia, and there will be established, "trusted" Wikipedians who will take advantage of their status to make money out of the situation. It doesn't surprise me at all to learn that there are any number of people doing this already.

Regardless of your stance on any individual issue (compulsory vaccinations or what-not), there's simply no way they can stop it, and the conflicts between the pro-corporate and anti-corporate Wikipedians might eventually make the deletionism/inclusionist controversy look like Lady Farnsworth's private tea party.

[Wikiturf]

Is this related to the Anti-Vaccinologist article, then?

No - but that's where Midgley spawned from. And I'm not an Anti-Vac person - just to avoid the tendency to file all critics in the same drawer. :-)

you could at least use them to prove the hypocrisy,

Thank you muchly! I'm keeping my eye on the whole thread.

(compulsory vaccinations or what-not)

I actually noticed a derogatory comment about the anti-vac people in an earlier thread. As an outsider to that whole argument, I have to say it's weird to see the same people questioning NPOV and the status of critics then turn around and try to find a way to exclude the anti-vac pov.

the conflicts between the pro-corporate and anti-corporate Wikipedians might eventually make the deletionism/inclusionist controversy look like Lady Farnsworth's private tea party.

In a way it's the same conflict, because a deletionist wants to pare the article down to *their* POV (which they project as the NPOV): this is the essence of good PR. An inclusionist wants to make sure several POVs are represented in order to prevent any person or organization from exercising dominance or "shaping perceptions".

I think there's a new round of this arguments coming because the Progressive attack on Fox's "Fair and Balanced" reporting is that "Balance" shouldn't be about accomodating Untruth. This basically gives permission to the people who were puffing themselves up as NPOV to now shut out dissent as Fox-ified fake Balance. Whoever is king of the NPOV will just proclaim his Royal Will equals the Truth until a stronger king knocks him off. That makes a mockery of the idea that Wikipedia is about consensus.

[Somey]

I have to say it's weird to see the same people questioning NPOV and the status of critics then turn around and try to find a way to exclude the anti-vac pov.

But not all that unusual, if enough people get together and decide that the other side of any given debate is "dangerous." Another problem is the "lumping-in effect," whereby if one person who holds a distinctly minority opinion tries to assert something unreasonable, everyone else who holds that opinion is tarred with the same brush, as a "wacko" - and this is then used as a convenient excuse to suppress all dissent from the majority viewpoint.

In a way it's the same conflict, because a deletionist wants to pare the article down to *their* POV (which they project as the NPOV): this is the essence of good PR. An inclusionist wants to make sure several POVs are represented in order to prevent any person or organization from exercising dominance or "shaping perceptions".

Interesting point. As we've seen, of course, many of these so-called inclusionists are among the same people crying foul at the prospect of Wikipedia being invaded by PR firms. It might be said (uncharitably, of course) that the inclusionist argument is often used selectively, i.e., only when the thing being included is compatible with the inclusionist's belief system, or serves the inclusionist's personal interests.

On the other hand, Everyking is an inclusionist, and he seems to avoid the "hypocrite" tag fairly well. Then again, I don't think we've heard his opinion on the PR-firm issue, have we? (EK?)

Here's what I think: As individuals, most of us care about privacy more than self-promotion, and I for one have practically conditioned myself into thinking that having a Wikipedia article created about me would be a terrible thing. A lot of that is due to the whole Daniel Brandt controversy, but I'd probably feel that way even if Daniel B. really didn't exist, and mind you, I'm not convinced he does. But not everyone prefers privacy to self-promotion, and most corporations certainly don't.

Nevertheless, it may well be that the only effective way to keep corporations out of Wikipedia is to poison the well - IOW, have admins and other "trusted editors" insert enough anti-corporate bias into these articles, and then protect those edits, to create enough anecdotal evidence of anti-corporatism to scare people away. (Alternatively, subtle vandalism campaigns made to look like "competitor sabotage" might accomplish the same thing.) That's probably not going to happen, though, and even if it did, this would just be yet another way in which the community fractures and implodes, transforming the site into even more of a battleground between various special interests than it is now, and compromising its integrity to the point of marginalization.

But the alternative is to watch the site be slowly taken over by Big Money, surreptitiously if necessary. These people have a lot of patience and they never, ever give up. What's more, they're almost certainly busy doing it already.

Yet another reason to not bother with it, if you ask me!

[Wikiturf]

inclusionists are among the same people crying foul at the prospect of Wikipedia being invaded by PR firms. It might be said (uncharitably, of course) that the inclusionist argument is often used selectively, i.e., only when the thing being included is compatible with the inclusionist's belief system, or serves the inclusionist's personal interests.

This makes sense. PR people are actively deleting anything that doesn't fit their "message" and claim all criticism is NPOV. It's often difficult to prove it's a PR person (or get anything done about it if you do prove it), so it's just easier to argue for inclusionism on the Talk Pages.

I believe true inclusionism would just be to let disagreeing parties say their piece without any deleting of either side. However, there's still a problem: which POV comes first. Right now the PR people have a serious advantage because they have the "info box". The "info box" is a prominently placed box with business information: it looks like a magazine ad. This box is at the top of the page and includes corporate branding in the form of their logo. The content of the info box is dictated by the apparently pro-PR people who are developing the info box module. If someone wants to add additional pertinent info, such as OSHA complaints, it's called "vandalism" of the Info Box.

To be inclusionist, Wikipedia needs to get rid of the info boxes and do something fair with the article structure so it doesn't imply POV by it's very hierarchy.

most of us care about privacy more than self-promotion

This is another issue. The Wikipedia rule about privacy has been weaponized. Midgley broke it all over the place, exploiting the fact that it would either take Mods a long time to get to him or if he filed enough preemptive complaints against his victims, it would confuse Mods to the point where they wouldn't realize he was an extremely obnoxious troll.

On the downside, when I directly asked if someone who was editing the article worked for the corporation, I was told that was "stalking". I take that seriously, and I didn't ask or investigate the matter further. But then, how do we identify the PR people and corporate employees without doing some sort of investigation? Would someone at Wikipedia be willing to do that investigation if asked?

have admins and other "trusted editors" insert enough anti-corporate bias

My impression is that a number of admins are pro-corporate: at least in the area I worked on. Two of them used my supposed "anti-corporate" bias to justify their reverts.

But the alternative is to watch the site be slowly taken over by Big Money, surreptitiously if necessary. These people have a lot of patience and they never, ever give up. What's more, they're almost certainly busy doing it already.

I agree - and I didn't see any good plan evolving to challenge them in the Wikien-L discussion.

Here's a suggestion that Jimbo probably won't like: stick no-robots code on the pages. Take the Google placement out of the mix all together. Just let users go to Wikipedia and search for articles within their own system.

[Wikiturf]

LOL - Internet karma smites a corporate wikiturfer (hint - it's the guy who is crying over his lost pictures).

[ombudsman]

most of us care about privacy more than self-promotion

This is another issue. The Wikipedia rule about privacy has been weaponized. Midgley broke it all over the place, exploiting the fact that it would either take Mods a long time to get to him or if he filed enough preemptive complaints against his victims, it would confuse Mods to the point where they wouldn't realize he was an extremely obnoxious troll.

On the downside, when I directly asked if someone who was editing the article worked for the corporation, I was told that was "stalking". I take that seriously, and I didn't ask or investigate the matter further. But then, how do we identify the PR people and corporate employees without doing some sort of investigation? Would someone at Wikipedia be willing to do that investigation if asked?

Medical article Wikiturfing has settled into a boring routine, with little sign of a let up -- for so long already, it seems, that a trigger happy mindset may have become entrenched...

[guy]

Medical article Wikiturfing has settled into a boring routine, with little sign of a let up -- for so long already, it seems, that a trigger happy mindset may have become entrenched...

I haven't looked at all the edit histories, but if a conscientious editor sees that someone is flooding an article with nonsense, isn't it his duty to do everything in his power to stop it? Jfdwolff is a medical doctor and a mature and responsible editor.

Oh dear - a medical doctor - an expert! Stop him editing medical articles at once!

[Somey]

Oh dear - a medical doctor - an expert! Stop him editing medical articles at once!

Maybe they should, actually. The medical community isn't one monolithic entity, with all of its members marching in ideological lockstep. Disagreements within the medical community are part of what drives research and innovation. Having one person, not matter how well-qualified, dominate the medical articles on the world's largest encyclopedia-like website can only be a setback, in those terms...

Mind you, I'm not saying "quack" medicine or other highly questionable kinds of biomedical research should be featured in any significant way, but if alternative ideas are simply quashed outright, that might actually be worse. I'd say it's better to at least provide some coverage of the alternative stuff, in a fair and rational way, than to suppress it.

Anyway, I'm off to have my brain transferred into a shiny new android body that will last for thousands of years! Soon, I'll be able to plug my USB 2.0 flash drive directly into my ear! BUWAHAHAHA!

[guy]

Oh dear - a medical doctor - an expert! Stop him editing medical articles at once!

Maybe they should, actually. The medical community isn't one monolithic entity, with all of its members marching in ideological lockstep. Disagreements within the medical community are part of what drives research and innovation. Having one person, not matter how well-qualified, dominate the medical articles on the world's largest encyclopedia-like website can only be a setback, in those terms...

I doubt that he's dominating all the medical articles. Even if he is, is that worse than having some ignoramus putting nonsense in them? I expect that on most articles, there'd be a pretty good consensus among experts.

[Wikiturf]

The problem isn't so much doctors editing medical articles - it's corporate hacks "brand managing" the articles of particular companies (and occasionally doctors who are writing as employees of the company instead of as medical experts). But the biggest problem of all is that whatever methods Wikipedia has to stem the wikiturfing, they've outright encouraged it in the medical area. Even if the article is about the company, not about medicine - if doctors are involved, they are given a wikiturf free pass.

[Wikiturf]

I retract my above remark! Behold - from Wikiturfer to In-house Revolutionary:

http://www.fixkp.org/

Kaiser is still scum for engaging in wikiturfing. That article is on the front page of Google search results for "Kaiser Permanente".