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Wikipedia

Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia

January 13, 2023

For Wikipedia's community guideline on conflict-of-interest editing, see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest.

Conflict-of-interest (COI) editing on Wikipedia occurs when editors use Wikipedia to advance the interests of their external roles or relationships. The type of COI editing of most concern on Wikipedia is paid editing for public relations (PR) purposes.[1] Several Wikipedia policies and guidelines exist to combat conflict of interest editing, including Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Controversies reported by the media include United States congressional staff editing articles about members of Congress in 2006; Microsoft offering a software engineer money to edit articles on competing code standards in 2007; the PR firm Bell Pottinger editing articles about its clients in 2011; and the discovery in 2012 that British MPs or their staff had removed criticism from articles about those MPs. The media has also written about COI editing by BP, the Central Intelligence Agency, Diebold, Portland Communications, Sony, the Vatican, and several others.

In 2012, Wikipedia launched one of its largest sockpuppet investigations, when editors reported suspicious activity suggesting 250 accounts had been used to engage in paid editing. Wikipedia traced the edits to a firm known as Wiki-PR and the accounts were banned. 2015's Operation Orangemoody uncovered another paid-editing scam, in which over 380 accounts were used to extort money from businesses to create and ostensibly protect promotional articles about them.

Wikipedia on conflict-of-interest editing

Wikipedia is edited by volunteer contributors. The conflict-of-interest Wikipedia guideline is a "generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow". This guideline strongly discourages COI editing and advises those with a financial conflict of interest, including paid editors, to refrain from direct article editing. The paid-contribution-disclosure policy, which has legal ramifications, requires that editors disclose their "employer, client, and affiliation" with respect to any contribution for which they are paid, including talk-page contributions.

On October 21, 2013, Sue Gardner, then-executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, condemned paid editing for promotional purposes.[1] The law firm Cooley LLP, in a cease and desist letter to Wiki-PR, wrote that "this practice violates the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use, including but not limited to Section 4, which prohibits users from 'engaging in false statements, impersonation, or fraud', and '...misrepresenting your affiliation with any individual or entity, or using the username of another user with the intent to deceive'".[2] In 2014, the Wikimedia Foundation updated their terms of use to require that editors disclose their "employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which [they] receive, or expect to receive, compensation".[3]

Laws against covert advertising

United States Federal Trade Commission

The Federal Trade Commission has published a guide to its regulations to implement federal law concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising at Endorsement Guidelines and Dot Com Disclosures.[4][5]

European fair trading law

In May 2012, the Munich Oberlandesgericht court confirmed a ruling against a company which edited Wikipedia articles with the aim of influencing customers. It viewed the edits as undeclared commercial practice according to The Act against unfair Competition Section 4, 3[6] as it constituted covert advertising, and as such were a violation of European fair trading law (see the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive). The ruling stated that readers cannot be expected to seek out user and talk pages to find editors' disclosures about their corporate affiliation. The case arose out of a claim against a company by a competitor over edits made to the article Weihrauchpräparat on the German Wikipedia.[7][8]

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK reached a similar decision in June 2012 in relation to material about Nike on Twitter. The ASA found that the content of certain tweets from two footballers had been "agreed with the help of a member of the Nike marketing team." The tweets were not clearly identified as Nike marketing communications, and were therefore in breach of the ASA's code.[9]

Incidents

See also: Political editing on Wikipedia and List of Wikipedia controversies

2000s

Jimmy Wales

In December 2005, it was found that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales had edited his own Wikipedia entry. According to public logs, he has edited his biography 19 times,[10] as of 9 September 2013, seven times altering information about whether Larry Sanger was a co-founder of Wikipedia. It was also revealed that Wales had edited the Wikipedia article of his former company, Bomis. "Bomis Babes", a section of the Bomis website, had been characterized in the article as "soft-core pornography", but Wales revised this to "adult content section" and deleted mentions of pornography. He said he was fixing an error, and did not agree with calling Bomis Babes soft porn. Wales conceded that he had made the changes, but maintained that they were technical corrections.[11]

MyWikiBiz

In August 2006, Gregory Kohs, a market researcher from Pennsylvania, founded MyWikiBiz, a company offering to write inexpensive Wikipedia entries for businesses.[12] In January 2007, Kohs said that in his view Wikipedia's coverage of major corporations was deficient, stating that "It is strange that a minor Pokémon character will get a 1,200-word article, but a Fortune 500 company will get ... maybe 100 words". A few days after issuing a press release about his business, Kohs' Wikipedia account was blocked. Kohs later recalled a phone call with Jimmy Wales who told him MyWikiBiz was "antithetical" to the mission of the encyclopedia.[13] Kohs said it surprised him that PR agencies were discouraged from editing articles: "There are around 130 'Fortune 1,000' companies absent from Wikipedia's pages ... How could they not benefit from a little PR help?"[14]

Microsoft

In January 2007, Australian software engineer Rick Jelliffe revealed that Microsoft had offered to pay him to edit Wikipedia articles on two competing code standards, OpenDocumentFormat and Microsoft Office Open XML.[15] Jelliffe, who described himself as a technical expert and not an advocate for Microsoft,[16][17] said he accepted the offer because he wanted the information on technical standards to be accurate.[16] Microsoft subsequently confirmed that it had offered to pay Jelliffe to edit the articles, stating that they were seeking "more balance" in the entries,[15] that articles contained inaccuracies,[18] that prior efforts to get attention from Wikipedia volunteers had failed, and that Microsoft had agreed that the company would not review Jelliffe's suggested changes. Microsoft also said they had not previously hired anyone to edit Wikipedia.[16]

Heated debate resulted after the revelation over whether such practices called Wikipedia's credibility into question.[15] In response to the incident, Jimmy Wales said paying for edits to Wikipedia was against the encyclopedia's spirit.[16][19] Wales said the better, more transparent choice would have been for Microsoft to produce a white paper on the subject, post it online, and link to it from Wikipedia.[19] He also stated "Although agencies and employees should not edit our pages, they do – but perhaps less than you would expect."[14]

Volunteer Wikipedia spokesperson David Gerard said, "[Wikipedia] tends not to look favorably in terms of conflict of interest, and paying someone is a conflict."[15] Gerard added that public relations representatives commonly get blocked from editing by Wikipedia administrators.[15]

In the same month that had seen conflict of interest issues raised by both Microsoft and MyWikiBiz, Wales stated that editors should not be paid to edit, and PR agencies would be banned if they persisted.[14]

WikiScanner

Main article: WikiScanner

In 2007, Virgil Griffith created a searchable database that linked changes made by anonymous Wikipedia editors to companies and organizations from which the changes were made. The database cross-referenced logs of Wikipedia edits with publicly available records pertaining to the internet IP addresses edits were made from.[20]

Most of the edits WikiScanner found were minor or harmless,[20] but further analysis detected more controversial and embarrassing instances of conflict of interest edits.[21] These instances received media coverage worldwide. Included among the accused were the Vatican,[22][23] the CIA,[20][23] the Federal Bureau of Investigation,[24] the US Democratic Party's Congressional Campaign Committee,[23][25] the US Republican Party,[26][25] Britain's Labour Party,[25] Britain's Conservative Party,[26] the Canadian government,[27] Industry Canada,[28] the Department of Prime Minister, Cabinet, and Defence in Australia,[29][30][31][32][33] the United Nations,[34] the US Senate,[35] the US Department of Homeland Security,[36] the US Environmental Protection Agency,[36] Montana Senator Conrad Burns,[20] Ohio Governor Bob Taft,[37] the Israeli government,[38] Exxon Mobil,[39] Walmart,[20][39] AstraZeneca, Diebold,[20][26][25] Dow Chemical,[26] Disney,[27] Dell,[39] Anheuser-Busch,[40] Nestlé,[26] Pepsi, Boeing,[26] Sony Computer Entertainment,[41] EA,[42] SCO Group,[40] MySpace,[26] Pfizer,[36] Raytheon,[36] DuPont,[43] Anglican and Catholic[failed verification] churches,[26] the Church of Scientology,[26][27] the World Harvest Church,[37] Amnesty International,[26] the Discovery Channel,[26] Fox News,[25][44] CBS, The Washington Post, the National Rifle Association,[26] News International,[26] Al Jazeera,[36] Bob Jones University,[36] and Ohio State University.[37]

Although the edits correlated with known IP addresses, there was no proof that the changes actually came from a member of the organization or employee of the company, only that someone had access to their network.[23]

Wikipedia spokespersons received WikiScanner positively, noting that it helped prevent conflicts of interest from influencing articles[24] as well as increasing transparency[23] and mitigating attempts to remove or distort relevant facts.[26]

Church of Scientology

Main article: Church of Scientology editing on Wikipedia

In 2008, a long-running dispute between members of the Church of Scientology and Wikipedia editors reached Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee. The church members were accused of attempting to sway articles in the church's interest, while other editors were accused of the opposite. The arbitration committee unanimously voted to block all edits from the IP addresses associated with the church; several Scientology critics were also banned.[45]

2010s

Koch brothers' use of PR firm

In 2010, Koch Industries began employing New Media Strategies (NMS), an internet PR firm specializing in "word-of-mouth marketing". Shortly afterwards, it was discovered that employees of the company, editing from IPs controlled by NMS, were editing the Wikipedia articles for Charles Koch, David Koch, Political activities of the Koch brothers, and The Science of Success (a book written by Charles). Under numerous usernames, NMS employees edited Wikipedia articles "to distance the Koch family from the Tea Party movement, to provide baseless comparisons between Koch and conspiracy theories surrounding George Soros, and to generally delete citations to liberal news outlets." These activities were exposed at Wikipedia and described in the press.[46] A large group of editors who were editing from NMS IPs became the subject of a sockpuppet investigation, were blocked, and later unblocked.[47]

London-based "PR fixer"

In June 2011, PR Week reported on a "fixer", a known but unnamed London-based figure in the PR industry, who offered services to "cleanse" articles. Wikipedia entries this person was accused of changing included Carphone Warehouse co-founder David Ross, Von Essen Group chairman Andrew Davis, British property developer David Rowland, billionaire Saudi tycoon Maan Al-Sanea, and Edward Stanley, 19th Earl of Derby. According to PR Week, 42 edits were made from the same IP address, most of them removing negative or controversial information, or adding positive information.[48]

Bell Pottinger

Main article: Bell Pottinger § Criticism

In December 2011, blogger Tim Ireland, The Independent, and the British Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) discovered that Bell Pottinger, one of the UK's largest public relations companies, had manipulated articles on behalf of its clients.[49] Wikipedians discovered up to 19 accounts, 10 of which had over 100 edits each, which traced back to Bell Pottinger's offices; as a result of the investigation 10 of the accounts were blocked.[50] Bell Pottinger was accused of using sock or meatpuppets to edit pages to create the appearance of support for changes in articles.[51] One of the most noted accounts was registered under the name "Biggleswiki"[50] (an internal Wikipedia investigation resulted in several such cases). Bell Pottinger admitted that its employees had used several accounts, but said that the company had not done anything illegal. Analysis of the edits demonstrated that the changes had both added positive information and removed negative content, including the removal of information regarding the drug conviction of a businessman and Bell Pottinger client, and changing information about the arrest of a man convicted for commercial bribery.[49]

Undercover BIJ reporters made inquiries while posing as members of the Uzbek government; Bell Pottinger told them that the company offered "sorting" of negative information and criticism on Wikipedia articles, as well as other "dark arts".[49]

Jimmy Wales called Bell Pottinger's actions "ethical blindness."[49] Timothy Bell, the chairman, launched an internal review, but disagreed with Wales's view. He said, "You can destroy someone's reputation in one minute and it will take years to rebuild," and continued: "It's important for Wikipedia to recognise we are a valuable source for accurate information," and "apparently if you are not-for-profit what you say is true but that if you are a paid-for advocate you are lying."[52] The head of digital at Bell Pottinger blamed the incident on Wikipedia's "confusing" editing system and "the pressure put on us by clients to remove potentially defamatory or libellous statements very quickly, because Wikipedia is so authoritative."[53]

In 2016, Bell Pottinger staff were reported to have edited Wikipedia articles relating to South African individuals and companies, while the agency was working for the Gupta family.[54][55] Substantial editing of the Wikipedia page about the Guptas was also reported; a Bell Pottinger employee was said to have emailed much of the content to a Gupta account for it to be uploaded.[56][57] In December 2016, South African billionaire Johann Rupert dropped Bell Pottinger as the PR agency of Richemont, accusing Bell Pottinger of running a social media campaign against him, to divert attention away from persistent 'state capture' allegations leveled at the Gupta family.[58][59] In February 2017, Rupert alleged that Bell Pottinger had maliciously altered his Wikipedia page.[60]

Portland Communications

Main article: Portland Communications § Wikipedia editing

In January 2012, British MP Tom Watson discovered that Portland Communications had been removing the nickname of one of its clients' products ("Wife Beater", referring to Anheuser-Busch InBev's Stella Artois beer) from Wikipedia. Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) CEO Jane Wilson noted, "Stella Artois is on the 'wife-beater' page because it is a nick-name in common currency for that brand of strong continental lager. The brand managers who want to change this have a wider reputational issue to address, editing the term from a Wikipedia page will not get rid of this association."[61] Other edits from Portland's offices included changes to articles about another Portland client, the Kazakhstan's BTA Bank, and its former head Mukhtar Ablyazov. Portland did not deny making the changes, arguing they had been done transparently and in accordance with Wikipedia's policies.[62] Portland Communications welcomed CIPR's subsequent announcement of a collaboration with Wikipedia and invited Jimmy Wales to speak to their company, as he did at Bell Pottinger.[63] Tom Watson was optimistic about the collaboration: "PR professionals need clear guidelines in this new world of online-information-sharing. That's why I am delighted that interested parties are coming together to establish a clear code of conduct."[64]

Gibraltarpedia

Main article: Gibraltarpedia

In September 2012, controversy surrounded Wikimedia UK trustee Roger Bamkin, who along with OCLC Wikipedian in Residence Maximillian Klein, had been organizing an effort named Gibraltarpedia to create articles about Gibraltar in partnership with the Gibraltar Tourism Board. Articles written under this program were featured on the Wikipedia mainpage an unusually high 17 times in the course of a few weeks.[65][66] This issue brought attention to organizational conflicts of interest regarding Wikimedia Movement partners, leading to an investigation of WMUK.[67] Bamkin stepped down as trustee following the media response.[68] Jimmy Wales commented, "It is wildly inappropriate for a board member of a chapter, or anyone else in an official role of any kind in a charity associated with Wikipedia, to take payment from customers in exchange for securing favorable placement on the front page of Wikimedia or anywhere else."[69][70]

GEO Group

In February 2013, for-profit prison company GEO Group received media coverage when a Wikipedia user under the name Abraham Cohen edited the entry on the company regarding naming rights to Florida Atlantic University (FAU) Stadium. GEO Group's Manager of Corporate Relations at the time was named Abraham Cohen, who is an FAU alumnus, former FAU student body president, and former ex-officio member of the FAU board of trustees.[71] Eleven edits constituting the majority of all those changes had been made in a single day under a Wikipedia account named "Abraham Cohen", the only day on which that account has ever been used.[72][73]

BP

In March 2013, it was reported that a member of BP's press office had submitted drafts to rewrite the company's article, including sections dealing with its environmental record; the drafts were reviewed and added by other editors.[74][75][76] Estimates of the size of the contributions were as high as 44 percent of the article.[77] The BP press officer, who called himself "Arturo at BP," said he had chosen that name to make his affiliation clear, and noted that he had not directly edited the page. The development caused concern because the content was being produced by an employee, while "readers would be none the wiser."[74] Jimmy Wales was quoted in Salon.com, saying "I think that accusing [BP employee] Arturo of 'skirting' Wikipedia's rules in this case is fairly ludicrous – unless 'skirting' means 'going above and beyond what is required in order to be very clearly in compliance with best practice.' So, I would consider that a blatant factual misrepresentation."[77] The Wikipedia community intensely debated the ethics of the incident and how to handle it and other similar cases.[78][79]

WikiExperts

Main article: WikiExperts § Terms of Use and conflict of interest guideline

This company affirms that "WikiExperts employees do not directly edit Wikipedia. Instead, we act as a consulting company which outsources such editing to most suitable affiliated experts."[80]

Wiki-PR

Main article: Wiki-PR editing of Wikipedia

In 2012, Wikipedia volunteers launched possibly one of the largest sockpuppet investigations in its history after editors on its website reported suspicious activity suggesting a number of accounts were used to subvert Wikipedia's policies. After almost a year of investigation, over 250 sockpuppet accounts were allegedly found, operated by two independent networks of users. Wikipedia editors traced the edits and sockpuppetry back to a firm known as Wiki-PR, leading to a cease and desist letter by Sue Gardner issued to the founders of the organization.[81] The accounts were banned. On 25 October 2013, a community ban was further placed on Wiki-PR and any of its contractors.

Peking Duk

At a December 2015 Peking Duk show in Melbourne, a fan named David Spargo accessed the backstage area by editing the band's Wikipedia article page and inserting himself as a family member. Upon showing the article and his ID to the security guards, he was granted access to the band with whom he shared a beer. The band reacted positively to this scheme, Adam Hyde stating: "He explained to us his amazing tactic to get past security to hang with us and we immediately cracked him a beer. This dude is the definition of a legend." However, Hyde did add: "It goes to show, never trust Wikipedia".[82][83]

Orangemoody

Main article: Orangemoody editing of Wikipedia

In 2015, the Wikipedia community blocked 381 accounts, many of them suspected sock puppets of the same people, after a two-month investigation called Operation Orangemoody revealed that the accounts had been used to blackmail firms "struggling to get pages about their businesses on Wikipedia." These businesses had been told by Wikipedia users that articles about them had been "rejected due to concerns of excessive promotional content." In a few cases, the users asking for money were the same accounts that had earlier rejected the articles for publication.[84]

The scammers asked for hundreds of pounds to "protect or promote" the firms' interests. Wikipedia deleted 210 articles related to UK businesses, most of them of middle size. Individuals were also targeted. The investigation was named OrangeMoody by Wikipedia editors after the name of the first identified account. An unnamed Wikipedia spokesperson[dubious – discuss] stated that "undisclosed paid advocacy editing may represent a serious conflict of interest and could compromise the quality of content on Wikipedia."[84]

Burger King

On 12 April 2017, Burger King released a commercial in which an employee states that he could not explain a Whopper in 15 seconds, after which he states "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?" The dialogue was designed to trigger voice searches on Android devices and Google Home smart speakers configured to automatically respond to the phrase "OK Google".[85] The specific query causes the device to read out a snippet sourced from Wikipedia's article on the Whopper. However, prior to the ad's premiere, the article had been edited by users, including one named "Burger King Corporation", so that Google's automatically generated response to the query (via the Google Knowledge Graph) would be a detailed description of the Whopper burger that utilized promotional language. The edits were reverted for violating Wikipedia's policies against blatant promotion.[86][87]

Furthermore, the snippet became the target of vandals, who edited the article to claim that the sandwich contained such ingredients as "cyanide", "a medium-sized child", "rat meat" and "toenail clippings", while some users reported that Google Home had relayed information from these vandalized revisions.[88][89][85] Soon after the release of the commercial, Google blacklisted its audio so that it would not trigger the always-on voice detection. Wikipedia also protected the Whopper article to prevent the promotional descriptions or vandalism from being re-inserted.[88] Burger King claimed to have released a modified version of the commercial later that evening which evaded Google's block.[90]

The North Face

 
Guarita State Park was one of several articles affected by a covert advertising campaign. The article's previous main image (above) was briefly replaced by one prominently featuring a man in a North Face jacket.

In May 2019, marketing agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made revealed they had been hired by outdoor clothing company The North Face to replace images of outdoor destinations with photos containing the company's apparel, in an attempt to get its apparel to appear at the top of Google results through search engine optimization.[91] Following media coverage, the photos were all removed from articles and some modified by Wikimedia Commons users to remove or obscure the branding.[92] The Wikimedia Foundation condemned the stunt, stating in a press release: "When The North Face exploits the trust you have in Wikipedia to sell you more clothes, you should be angry. Adding content that is solely for commercial promotion goes directly against the policies, purpose and mission of Wikipedia".[93]

After Wikipedia volunteers blocked the accounts involved for breaches of Wikipedia policies on paid editing,[94] The North Face posted a response as a reply on Twitter, stating that they had ended the campaign and that "We believe deeply in Wikipedia's mission and apologize for engaging in activity inconsistent with those principles."[95][96] Leo Burnett Tailor Made stated they "found a unique way to contribute photography of adventure destinations to their respective Wikipedia articles while achieving the goal of elevating those images in search rankings" and that they had "since learned that this effort worked counter to Wikipedia’s community guidelines."[97] The community of Wikimedia Commons started a process to delete the images. After half a month of discussion, all the images were deleted on copyright grounds.[98][99]

The campaign was described as "wildly misguided" and as having "egregiously violated just about every principle you can think about with respect to trying to maintain consumer trust" by Americus Reed, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania in an interview to The New York Times.[100]

2020s

Saudi infiltration

On 6 December 2022, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that it had globally banned 16 users — including seven administrators of Arabic Wikipedia as well as several ordinary users of Arabic Wikipedia and Persian Wikipedia — for conflict-of-interest editing of Middle East and North Africa topics. Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) alleged these users to have been agents of the Saudi Arabian government; the organization also drew attention to the case of two administrators of Arabic Wikipedia from Saudi Arabia, — Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani — who had been arrested in 2020, and allegedly sentenced to imprisonment on charges including but not limited to their editing of Wikipedia.[101] The Foundation rejected DAWN's allegations about Saudi infiltration but did not comment on the incarceration of two administrators; it refused to confirm the specifics of the ban either.[102][103]

Miscellaneous

2000s

In January 2006, a change was made to the article Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau, removing the words "and false" from the characterization "incomplete and false" of information given by the princess regarding her relationship with slain drug lord Klaas Bruinsma. The changes were traced back to a royal palace used by the princess.[104]

In April 2008, Phorm deleted material related to a controversy over its advertising deals.[105]

2010s

In September 2012, there was media attention surrounding two Wikipedia employees who were running a PR business on the side and editing Wikipedia on behalf of their clients.[106]

Edits involving Daimler AG were reported in March 2012.[107] In August that year, the communications director for Idaho's Department of Education, Melissa McGrath, edited the article on her boss, Tom Luna.[108] In September it was revealed that Tory Party charmain Grant Shapps had changed the information about his academic record as well as donor information.[109] Also in September, writer Philip Roth wrote a piece in The New Yorker chronicling his difficulty changing information about one of his novels.[110][111]

In November, Finsbury, the firm led by Roland Rudd, was found to have anonymously edited the article about Alisher Usmanov, removing information about various controversies.[112]

In January 2014, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that Sarah Stierch was "no longer an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation", after evidence was presented on a Wikimedia mailing list that she had "been editing Wikipedia on behalf of paying clients" – a practice the Wikimedia Foundation said was "frowned upon by many in the editing community and by the Wikimedia Foundation".[113][114][115]

In June 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported that Banc de Binary, which had been cited for unregistered options trading by US regulators, posted an advertisement on a freelancing bulletin board "offering more than $10,000 for 'crisis management'" of its Wikipedia page.[116]

In March 2015, The Washington Post reported that The New York Police Department had confirmed that at least some edits to Wikipedia entries about people who died following confrontations with NYPD officers were made from computers on the department's servers.[117]

In March 2019, HuffPost reported that Facebook, Axios, NBC News, and Nextdoor have paid lawyer Ed Sussman to lobby for changes to their Wikipedia articles, as well as the articles on Sheryl Sandberg, Jonathan Swan, Chuck Todd, Andy Lack, and Noah Oppenheim.[118][119]

In his October 2019 book Catch and Kill, reporter Ronan Farrow reported that NBC News hired a "Wikipedia whitewasher" who removed references to NBC's role in the Weinstein case from several Wikipedia articles. NBC does not dispute the allegation.[120]

In December 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported on paid conflict-of-interest editing by the reputation management company Status Labs regarding several of their clients, including former Bank of America executive Omeed Malik and the health technology corporation Theranos.[121]

2020s

In May 2020, Le Monde reported on the blocking of about 200 Wikipedia accounts related to French PR companies.[122]

In August and September 2021, a plant-based food company called This replaced images on the Bacon article with images of their own products; the edits were quickly reverted and the account blocked.[123]

In November 2021, The Guardian reported on conflict-of-interest editing regarding billionaire Richard Desmond. Attempts to remove the article's description of Desmond as a "pornographer" had been going on for years. Lawyers hired by Desmond have argued for removal.[124]

In May 2022, Haaretz reported on conflict-of-interest editing, mainly regarding Russian oligarchs.[125]

Reception

Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement

Phil Gomes, senior vice-president of a PR firm named Edelman Digital, created a Facebook group called "Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement" (CREWE) in January 2012.[126] According to Gerard F. Corbett, CEO of the Public Relations Society of America, CREWE is based on four principles: 1) Corporate communicators want to do the right thing; 2) communicators engaged in ethical practice have a lot to contribute; 3) current Wikipedia policy does not fully understand numbers 1 and 2, because of the activities of some bad actors and a misunderstanding of public relations; and 4) accurate Wikipedia entries are in the public interest.[127]

CREWE lobbies for greater involvement by PR professionals on the site, with the stated goal of maintaining accurate articles about corporations. Some Wikipedia editors, including Jimmy Wales, joined the group to discuss these issues.[128] In an open letter to Wales, Gomes argued that Wikipedia's prominence as a top search result adds a level of responsibility to be accurate. Gomes also criticized allegedly inaccurate or outdated articles and the lack of timely response to issues raised in existing channels. He further argued that allowing PR representatives to fix minor errors such as spelling, grammar, and facts leaves too much ambiguity about what are acceptable changes to make. He made the comparison between PR editors and activists, challenging that activists seem to enjoy "much more latitude," and argued that in certain situations direct editing of articles by PR reps was called for.[129]

CIPR and PRSA

In January 2012, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) in the UK began to collaborate with the regional Wikimedia UK chapter (WMUK) to provide guidance for CIPR members on how to interact with the Wikipedia community.[130] Jane Wilson, CIPR CEO, said in February 2012: "For the time being, we may have to start with an acceptance that Wikipedians have a problem with our profession and this reputation has unfortunately been earned. We can't change this overnight but by working in partnership with Wikimedia UK and Wikipedians, through outreach, diplomacy and dialogue, we can make a difference."[61]

In January 2012, Gerard Corbett, head of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), said "We believe there is a case to be made for PR professionals to responsibly edit client Wikipedia entries in an ethical and transparent manner." In June, he commended CIPR for reaching a point of agreement with Wikipedia, but said "... nothing has changed at all".[131]

International Association of Business Communicators

The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) devoted their September 2012 CW Bulletin to paid editing on Wikipedia.[132] PR pro Mark Estes said that: "As an advocate, a public relations professional is accountable to his or her client or organization. As a voice of social conscience, however, a public relations professional is accountable to the public at large. Thus, the innate conflict between the two identities. The theory of responsible advocacy attempts to reconcile that conflict and provide guidance to achieve common ground.[133] PR professional David King recommended "collaborating with nothing to hide," emphasizing transparency and the importance of not editing articles directly. He explained: "When legal and marketing departments establish their corporate Wikipedia strategy or policy, they often feel they are faced with only two choices: Ignore one of the world’s most influential websites with a hands-off policy or engage in the risky, controversial and ethically ambiguous practice of direct editing. In some circumstances these are both good strategies, but most companies can find more effective middle ground by engaging in PR or content marketing with Wikipedia’s citizen journalists—a safe and ethical way to make improvements that is valuable both for the organization and Wikipedia.[134]

WikiProject Cooperation and WikiProject Integrity

On 6 January 2012, a Wikipedian created WikiProject Integrity (formerly WikiProject Paid Advocacy Watch).[135] The goal of this Wikiproject is to "discuss, raise awareness of, and hopefully address issues regarding paid editing on Wikipedia, in which people are compensated to create and edit Wikipedia articles."[136]

Days later, on 10 January, another editor created WikiProject Cooperation. It has been defunct since April 2019. The project page says that it "facilitates collaboration with editors paid to edit Wikipedia."[137] The group is made up of both paid and volunteer Wikipedia editors.[137] The group provides "education and outreach to public relations and marketing professionals, freelance editors, and employees working on assignments from their employers" with the goal of "support[ing] ethical, transparent paid editors that opt-in to collaborative efforts to meet Wikipedia's encyclopedic goals, serve the public's interest and avoid even the perception of impropriety." The main avenue for accomplishing its goals is a paid editor help page, where paid editors and representatives can requests changes to an article and have it reviewed by an experienced editor.[138] WikiProject Cooperation echoes the COI guideline in strongly discouraging paid editors from making direct edits to articles.[137]

2014 statement by 11 PR firms

In June 2014, 11 major public relations companies signed a statement agreeing to comply with Wikipedia's policies on conflict-of-interest editing.[139]

See also

References

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Further reading

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia.

January 13, 2023
conflict, interest, editing, wikipedia, wikipedia, community, guideline, conflict, interest, editing, wikipedia, conflict, interest, conflict, interest, editing, wikipedia, occurs, when, editors, wikipedia, advance, interests, their, external, roles, relations. For Wikipedia s community guideline on conflict of interest editing see Wikipedia Conflict of interest Conflict of interest COI editing on Wikipedia occurs when editors use Wikipedia to advance the interests of their external roles or relationships The type of COI editing of most concern on Wikipedia is paid editing for public relations PR purposes 1 Several Wikipedia policies and guidelines exist to combat conflict of interest editing including Wikipedia Conflict of interest and Wikipedia Paid contribution disclosure Controversies reported by the media include United States congressional staff editing articles about members of Congress in 2006 Microsoft offering a software engineer money to edit articles on competing code standards in 2007 the PR firm Bell Pottinger editing articles about its clients in 2011 and the discovery in 2012 that British MPs or their staff had removed criticism from articles about those MPs The media has also written about COI editing by BP the Central Intelligence Agency Diebold Portland Communications Sony the Vatican and several others In 2012 Wikipedia launched one of its largest sockpuppet investigations when editors reported suspicious activity suggesting 250 accounts had been used to engage in paid editing Wikipedia traced the edits to a firm known as Wiki PR and the accounts were banned 2015 s Operation Orangemoody uncovered another paid editing scam in which over 380 accounts were used to extort money from businesses to create and ostensibly protect promotional articles about them Contents 1 Wikipedia on conflict of interest editing 2 Laws against covert advertising 2 1 United States Federal Trade Commission 2 2 European fair trading law 3 Incidents 3 1 2000s 3 1 1 Jimmy Wales 3 1 2 MyWikiBiz 3 1 3 Microsoft 3 1 4 WikiScanner 3 1 5 Church of Scientology 3 2 2010s 3 2 1 Koch brothers use of PR firm 3 2 2 London based PR fixer 3 2 3 Bell Pottinger 3 2 4 Portland Communications 3 2 5 Gibraltarpedia 3 2 6 GEO Group 3 2 7 BP 3 2 8 WikiExperts 3 2 9 Wiki PR 3 2 10 Peking Duk 3 2 11 Orangemoody 3 2 12 Burger King 3 2 13 The North Face 3 3 2020s 3 3 1 Saudi infiltration 3 4 Miscellaneous 3 4 1 2000s 3 4 2 2010s 3 4 3 2020s 4 Reception 4 1 Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement 4 2 CIPR and PRSA 4 3 International Association of Business Communicators 4 4 WikiProject Cooperation and WikiProject Integrity 4 5 2014 statement by 11 PR firms 5 See also 6 References 7 Further readingWikipedia on conflict of interest editing EditWikipedia is edited by volunteer contributors The conflict of interest Wikipedia guideline is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow This guideline strongly discourages COI editing and advises those with a financial conflict of interest including paid editors to refrain from direct article editing The paid contribution disclosure policy which has legal ramifications requires that editors disclose their employer client and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which they are paid including talk page contributions On October 21 2013 Sue Gardner then executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation condemned paid editing for promotional purposes 1 The law firm Cooley LLP in a cease and desist letter to Wiki PR wrote that this practice violates the Wikimedia Foundation s terms of use including but not limited to Section 4 which prohibits users from engaging in false statements impersonation or fraud and misrepresenting your affiliation with any individual or entity or using the username of another user with the intent to deceive 2 In 2014 the Wikimedia Foundation updated their terms of use to require that editors disclose their employer client and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which they receive or expect to receive compensation 3 Laws against covert advertising EditUnited States Federal Trade Commission Edit The Federal Trade Commission has published a guide to its regulations to implement federal law concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising at Endorsement Guidelines and Dot Com Disclosures 4 5 European fair trading law Edit In May 2012 the Munich Oberlandesgericht court confirmed a ruling against a company which edited Wikipedia articles with the aim of influencing customers It viewed the edits as undeclared commercial practice according to The Act against unfair Competition Section 4 3 6 as it constituted covert advertising and as such were a violation of European fair trading law see the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive The ruling stated that readers cannot be expected to seek out user and talk pages to find editors disclosures about their corporate affiliation The case arose out of a claim against a company by a competitor over edits made to the article Weihrauchpraparat on the German Wikipedia 7 8 The Advertising Standards Authority ASA in the UK reached a similar decision in June 2012 in relation to material about Nike on Twitter The ASA found that the content of certain tweets from two footballers had been agreed with the help of a member of the Nike marketing team The tweets were not clearly identified as Nike marketing communications and were therefore in breach of the ASA s code 9 Incidents EditSee also Political editing on Wikipedia and List of Wikipedia controversies 2000s Edit Jimmy Wales Edit In December 2005 it was found that Wikipedia co founder Jimmy Wales had edited his own Wikipedia entry According to public logs he has edited his biography 19 times 10 as of 9 September 2013 seven times altering information about whether Larry Sanger was a co founder of Wikipedia It was also revealed that Wales had edited the Wikipedia article of his former company Bomis Bomis Babes a section of the Bomis website had been characterized in the article as soft core pornography but Wales revised this to adult content section and deleted mentions of pornography He said he was fixing an error and did not agree with calling Bomis Babes soft porn Wales conceded that he had made the changes but maintained that they were technical corrections 11 MyWikiBiz Edit In August 2006 Gregory Kohs a market researcher from Pennsylvania founded MyWikiBiz a company offering to write inexpensive Wikipedia entries for businesses 12 In January 2007 Kohs said that in his view Wikipedia s coverage of major corporations was deficient stating that It is strange that a minor Pokemon character will get a 1 200 word article but a Fortune 500 company will get maybe 100 words A few days after issuing a press release about his business Kohs Wikipedia account was blocked Kohs later recalled a phone call with Jimmy Wales who told him MyWikiBiz was antithetical to the mission of the encyclopedia 13 Kohs said it surprised him that PR agencies were discouraged from editing articles There are around 130 Fortune 1 000 companies absent from Wikipedia s pages How could they not benefit from a little PR help 14 Microsoft Edit In January 2007 Australian software engineer Rick Jelliffe revealed that Microsoft had offered to pay him to edit Wikipedia articles on two competing code standards OpenDocumentFormat and Microsoft Office Open XML 15 Jelliffe who described himself as a technical expert and not an advocate for Microsoft 16 17 said he accepted the offer because he wanted the information on technical standards to be accurate 16 Microsoft subsequently confirmed that it had offered to pay Jelliffe to edit the articles stating that they were seeking more balance in the entries 15 that articles contained inaccuracies 18 that prior efforts to get attention from Wikipedia volunteers had failed and that Microsoft had agreed that the company would not review Jelliffe s suggested changes Microsoft also said they had not previously hired anyone to edit Wikipedia 16 Heated debate resulted after the revelation over whether such practices called Wikipedia s credibility into question 15 In response to the incident Jimmy Wales said paying for edits to Wikipedia was against the encyclopedia s spirit 16 19 Wales said the better more transparent choice would have been for Microsoft to produce a white paper on the subject post it online and link to it from Wikipedia 19 He also stated Although agencies and employees should not edit our pages they do but perhaps less than you would expect 14 Volunteer Wikipedia spokesperson David Gerard said Wikipedia tends not to look favorably in terms of conflict of interest and paying someone is a conflict 15 Gerard added that public relations representatives commonly get blocked from editing by Wikipedia administrators 15 In the same month that had seen conflict of interest issues raised by both Microsoft and MyWikiBiz Wales stated that editors should not be paid to edit and PR agencies would be banned if they persisted 14 WikiScanner Edit Main article WikiScanner In 2007 Virgil Griffith created a searchable database that linked changes made by anonymous Wikipedia editors to companies and organizations from which the changes were made The database cross referenced logs of Wikipedia edits with publicly available records pertaining to the internet IP addresses edits were made from 20 Most of the edits WikiScanner found were minor or harmless 20 but further analysis detected more controversial and embarrassing instances of conflict of interest edits 21 These instances received media coverage worldwide Included among the accused were the Vatican 22 23 the CIA 20 23 the Federal Bureau of Investigation 24 the US Democratic Party s Congressional Campaign Committee 23 25 the US Republican Party 26 25 Britain s Labour Party 25 Britain s Conservative Party 26 the Canadian government 27 Industry Canada 28 the Department of Prime Minister Cabinet and Defence in Australia 29 30 31 32 33 the United Nations 34 the US Senate 35 the US Department of Homeland Security 36 the US Environmental Protection Agency 36 Montana Senator Conrad Burns 20 Ohio Governor Bob Taft 37 the Israeli government 38 Exxon Mobil 39 Walmart 20 39 AstraZeneca Diebold 20 26 25 Dow Chemical 26 Disney 27 Dell 39 Anheuser Busch 40 Nestle 26 Pepsi Boeing 26 Sony Computer Entertainment 41 EA 42 SCO Group 40 MySpace 26 Pfizer 36 Raytheon 36 DuPont 43 Anglican and Catholic failed verification churches 26 the Church of Scientology 26 27 the World Harvest Church 37 Amnesty International 26 the Discovery Channel 26 Fox News 25 44 CBS The Washington Post the National Rifle Association 26 News International 26 Al Jazeera 36 Bob Jones University 36 and Ohio State University 37 Although the edits correlated with known IP addresses there was no proof that the changes actually came from a member of the organization or employee of the company only that someone had access to their network 23 Wikipedia spokespersons received WikiScanner positively noting that it helped prevent conflicts of interest from influencing articles 24 as well as increasing transparency 23 and mitigating attempts to remove or distort relevant facts 26 Church of Scientology Edit Main article Church of Scientology editing on Wikipedia In 2008 a long running dispute between members of the Church of Scientology and Wikipedia editors reached Wikipedia s Arbitration Committee The church members were accused of attempting to sway articles in the church s interest while other editors were accused of the opposite The arbitration committee unanimously voted to block all edits from the IP addresses associated with the church several Scientology critics were also banned 45 2010s Edit Koch brothers use of PR firm Edit In 2010 Koch Industries began employing New Media Strategies NMS an internet PR firm specializing in word of mouth marketing Shortly afterwards it was discovered that employees of the company editing from IPs controlled by NMS were editing the Wikipedia articles for Charles Koch David Koch Political activities of the Koch brothers and The Science of Success a book written by Charles Under numerous usernames NMS employees edited Wikipedia articles to distance the Koch family from the Tea Party movement to provide baseless comparisons between Koch and conspiracy theories surrounding George Soros and to generally delete citations to liberal news outlets These activities were exposed at Wikipedia and described in the press 46 A large group of editors who were editing from NMS IPs became the subject of a sockpuppet investigation were blocked and later unblocked 47 London based PR fixer Edit In June 2011 PR Week reported on a fixer a known but unnamed London based figure in the PR industry who offered services to cleanse articles Wikipedia entries this person was accused of changing included Carphone Warehouse co founder David Ross Von Essen Group chairman Andrew Davis British property developer David Rowland billionaire Saudi tycoon Maan Al Sanea and Edward Stanley 19th Earl of Derby According to PR Week 42 edits were made from the same IP address most of them removing negative or controversial information or adding positive information 48 Bell Pottinger Edit Main article Bell Pottinger Criticism In December 2011 blogger Tim Ireland The Independent and the British Bureau of Investigative Journalism BIJ discovered that Bell Pottinger one of the UK s largest public relations companies had manipulated articles on behalf of its clients 49 Wikipedians discovered up to 19 accounts 10 of which had over 100 edits each which traced back to Bell Pottinger s offices as a result of the investigation 10 of the accounts were blocked 50 Bell Pottinger was accused of using sock or meatpuppets to edit pages to create the appearance of support for changes in articles 51 One of the most noted accounts was registered under the name Biggleswiki 50 an internal Wikipedia investigation resulted in several such cases Bell Pottinger admitted that its employees had used several accounts but said that the company had not done anything illegal Analysis of the edits demonstrated that the changes had both added positive information and removed negative content including the removal of information regarding the drug conviction of a businessman and Bell Pottinger client and changing information about the arrest of a man convicted for commercial bribery 49 Undercover BIJ reporters made inquiries while posing as members of the Uzbek government Bell Pottinger told them that the company offered sorting of negative information and criticism on Wikipedia articles as well as other dark arts 49 Jimmy Wales called Bell Pottinger s actions ethical blindness 49 Timothy Bell the chairman launched an internal review but disagreed with Wales s view He said You can destroy someone s reputation in one minute and it will take years to rebuild and continued It s important for Wikipedia to recognise we are a valuable source for accurate information and apparently if you are not for profit what you say is true but that if you are a paid for advocate you are lying 52 The head of digital at Bell Pottinger blamed the incident on Wikipedia s confusing editing system and the pressure put on us by clients to remove potentially defamatory or libellous statements very quickly because Wikipedia is so authoritative 53 In 2016 Bell Pottinger staff were reported to have edited Wikipedia articles relating to South African individuals and companies while the agency was working for the Gupta family 54 55 Substantial editing of the Wikipedia page about the Guptas was also reported a Bell Pottinger employee was said to have emailed much of the content to a Gupta account for it to be uploaded 56 57 In December 2016 South African billionaire Johann Rupert dropped Bell Pottinger as the PR agency of Richemont accusing Bell Pottinger of running a social media campaign against him to divert attention away from persistent state capture allegations leveled at the Gupta family 58 59 In February 2017 Rupert alleged that Bell Pottinger had maliciously altered his Wikipedia page 60 Portland Communications Edit Main article Portland Communications Wikipedia editing In January 2012 British MP Tom Watson discovered that Portland Communications had been removing the nickname of one of its clients products Wife Beater referring to Anheuser Busch InBev s Stella Artois beer from Wikipedia Chartered Institute of Public Relations CIPR CEO Jane Wilson noted Stella Artois is on the wife beater page because it is a nick name in common currency for that brand of strong continental lager The brand managers who want to change this have a wider reputational issue to address editing the term from a Wikipedia page will not get rid of this association 61 Other edits from Portland s offices included changes to articles about another Portland client the Kazakhstan s BTA Bank and its former head Mukhtar Ablyazov Portland did not deny making the changes arguing they had been done transparently and in accordance with Wikipedia s policies 62 Portland Communications welcomed CIPR s subsequent announcement of a collaboration with Wikipedia and invited Jimmy Wales to speak to their company as he did at Bell Pottinger 63 Tom Watson was optimistic about the collaboration PR professionals need clear guidelines in this new world of online information sharing That s why I am delighted that interested parties are coming together to establish a clear code of conduct 64 Gibraltarpedia Edit Main article Gibraltarpedia In September 2012 controversy surrounded Wikimedia UK trustee Roger Bamkin who along with OCLC Wikipedian in Residence Maximillian Klein had been organizing an effort named Gibraltarpedia to create articles about Gibraltar in partnership with the Gibraltar Tourism Board Articles written under this program were featured on the Wikipedia mainpage an unusually high 17 times in the course of a few weeks 65 66 This issue brought attention to organizational conflicts of interest regarding Wikimedia Movement partners leading to an investigation of WMUK 67 Bamkin stepped down as trustee following the media response 68 Jimmy Wales commented It is wildly inappropriate for a board member of a chapter or anyone else in an official role of any kind in a charity associated with Wikipedia to take payment from customers in exchange for securing favorable placement on the front page of Wikimedia or anywhere else 69 70 GEO Group Edit In February 2013 for profit prison company GEO Group received media coverage when a Wikipedia user under the name Abraham Cohen edited the entry on the company regarding naming rights to Florida Atlantic University FAU Stadium GEO Group s Manager of Corporate Relations at the time was named Abraham Cohen who is an FAU alumnus former FAU student body president and former ex officio member of the FAU board of trustees 71 Eleven edits constituting the majority of all those changes had been made in a single day under a Wikipedia account named Abraham Cohen the only day on which that account has ever been used 72 73 BP Edit In March 2013 it was reported that a member of BP s press office had submitted drafts to rewrite the company s article including sections dealing with its environmental record the drafts were reviewed and added by other editors 74 75 76 Estimates of the size of the contributions were as high as 44 percent of the article 77 The BP press officer who called himself Arturo at BP said he had chosen that name to make his affiliation clear and noted that he had not directly edited the page The development caused concern because the content was being produced by an employee while readers would be none the wiser 74 Jimmy Wales was quoted in Salon com saying I think that accusing BP employee Arturo of skirting Wikipedia s rules in this case is fairly ludicrous unless skirting means going above and beyond what is required in order to be very clearly in compliance with best practice So I would consider that a blatant factual misrepresentation 77 The Wikipedia community intensely debated the ethics of the incident and how to handle it and other similar cases 78 79 WikiExperts Edit Main article WikiExperts Terms of Use and conflict of interest guideline This company affirms that WikiExperts employees do not directly edit Wikipedia Instead we act as a consulting company which outsources such editing to most suitable affiliated experts 80 Wiki PR Edit Main article Wiki PR editing of Wikipedia In 2012 Wikipedia volunteers launched possibly one of the largest sockpuppet investigations in its history after editors on its website reported suspicious activity suggesting a number of accounts were used to subvert Wikipedia s policies After almost a year of investigation over 250 sockpuppet accounts were allegedly found operated by two independent networks of users Wikipedia editors traced the edits and sockpuppetry back to a firm known as Wiki PR leading to a cease and desist letter by Sue Gardner issued to the founders of the organization 81 The accounts were banned On 25 October 2013 a community ban was further placed on Wiki PR and any of its contractors Peking Duk Edit At a December 2015 Peking Duk show in Melbourne a fan named David Spargo accessed the backstage area by editing the band s Wikipedia article page and inserting himself as a family member Upon showing the article and his ID to the security guards he was granted access to the band with whom he shared a beer The band reacted positively to this scheme Adam Hyde stating He explained to us his amazing tactic to get past security to hang with us and we immediately cracked him a beer This dude is the definition of a legend However Hyde did add It goes to show never trust Wikipedia 82 83 Orangemoody Edit Main article Orangemoody editing of Wikipedia In 2015 the Wikipedia community blocked 381 accounts many of them suspected sock puppets of the same people after a two month investigation called Operation Orangemoody revealed that the accounts had been used to blackmail firms struggling to get pages about their businesses on Wikipedia These businesses had been told by Wikipedia users that articles about them had been rejected due to concerns of excessive promotional content In a few cases the users asking for money were the same accounts that had earlier rejected the articles for publication 84 The scammers asked for hundreds of pounds to protect or promote the firms interests Wikipedia deleted 210 articles related to UK businesses most of them of middle size Individuals were also targeted The investigation was named OrangeMoody by Wikipedia editors after the name of the first identified account An unnamed Wikipedia spokesperson dubious discuss stated that undisclosed paid advocacy editing may represent a serious conflict of interest and could compromise the quality of content on Wikipedia 84 Burger King Edit On 12 April 2017 Burger King released a commercial in which an employee states that he could not explain a Whopper in 15 seconds after which he states OK Google what is the Whopper burger The dialogue was designed to trigger voice searches on Android devices and Google Home smart speakers configured to automatically respond to the phrase OK Google 85 The specific query causes the device to read out a snippet sourced from Wikipedia s article on the Whopper However prior to the ad s premiere the article had been edited by users including one named Burger King Corporation so that Google s automatically generated response to the query via the Google Knowledge Graph would be a detailed description of the Whopper burger that utilized promotional language The edits were reverted for violating Wikipedia s policies against blatant promotion 86 87 Furthermore the snippet became the target of vandals who edited the article to claim that the sandwich contained such ingredients as cyanide a medium sized child rat meat and toenail clippings while some users reported that Google Home had relayed information from these vandalized revisions 88 89 85 Soon after the release of the commercial Google blacklisted its audio so that it would not trigger the always on voice detection Wikipedia also protected the Whopper article to prevent the promotional descriptions or vandalism from being re inserted 88 Burger King claimed to have released a modified version of the commercial later that evening which evaded Google s block 90 The North Face Edit Guarita State Park was one of several articles affected by a covert advertising campaign The article s previous main image above was briefly replaced by one prominently featuring a man in a North Face jacket In May 2019 marketing agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made revealed they had been hired by outdoor clothing company The North Face to replace images of outdoor destinations with photos containing the company s apparel in an attempt to get its apparel to appear at the top of Google results through search engine optimization 91 Following media coverage the photos were all removed from articles and some modified by Wikimedia Commons users to remove or obscure the branding 92 The Wikimedia Foundation condemned the stunt stating in a press release When The North Face exploits the trust you have in Wikipedia to sell you more clothes you should be angry Adding content that is solely for commercial promotion goes directly against the policies purpose and mission of Wikipedia 93 After Wikipedia volunteers blocked the accounts involved for breaches of Wikipedia policies on paid editing 94 The North Face posted a response as a reply on Twitter stating that they had ended the campaign and that We believe deeply in Wikipedia s mission and apologize for engaging in activity inconsistent with those principles 95 96 Leo Burnett Tailor Made stated they found a unique way to contribute photography of adventure destinations to their respective Wikipedia articles while achieving the goal of elevating those images in search rankings and that they had since learned that this effort worked counter to Wikipedia s community guidelines 97 The community of Wikimedia Commons started a process to delete the images After half a month of discussion all the images were deleted on copyright grounds 98 99 The campaign was described as wildly misguided and as having egregiously violated just about every principle you can think about with respect to trying to maintain consumer trust by Americus Reed a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania in an interview to The New York Times 100 2020s Edit Saudi infiltration Edit On 6 December 2022 the Wikimedia Foundation announced that it had globally banned 16 users including seven administrators of Arabic Wikipedia as well as several ordinary users of Arabic Wikipedia and Persian Wikipedia for conflict of interest editing of Middle East and North Africa topics Democracy for the Arab World Now DAWN alleged these users to have been agents of the Saudi Arabian government the organization also drew attention to the case of two administrators of Arabic Wikipedia from Saudi Arabia Osama Khalid and Ziyad al Sofiani who had been arrested in 2020 and allegedly sentenced to imprisonment on charges including but not limited to their editing of Wikipedia 101 The Foundation rejected DAWN s allegations about Saudi infiltration but did not comment on the incarceration of two administrators it refused to confirm the specifics of the ban either 102 103 Miscellaneous Edit 2000s Edit In January 2006 a change was made to the article Princess Mabel of Orange Nassau removing the words and false from the characterization incomplete and false of information given by the princess regarding her relationship with slain drug lord Klaas Bruinsma The changes were traced back to a royal palace used by the princess 104 In April 2008 Phorm deleted material related to a controversy over its advertising deals 105 2010s Edit In September 2012 there was media attention surrounding two Wikipedia employees who were running a PR business on the side and editing Wikipedia on behalf of their clients 106 Edits involving Daimler AG were reported in March 2012 107 In August that year the communications director for Idaho s Department of Education Melissa McGrath edited the article on her boss Tom Luna 108 In September it was revealed that Tory Party charmain Grant Shapps had changed the information about his academic record as well as donor information 109 Also in September writer Philip Roth wrote a piece in The New Yorker chronicling his difficulty changing information about one of his novels 110 111 In November Finsbury the firm led by Roland Rudd was found to have anonymously edited the article about Alisher Usmanov removing information about various controversies 112 In January 2014 the Wikimedia Foundation announced that Sarah Stierch was no longer an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation after evidence was presented on a Wikimedia mailing list that she had been editing Wikipedia on behalf of paying clients a practice the Wikimedia Foundation said was frowned upon by many in the editing community and by the Wikimedia Foundation 113 114 115 In June 2014 The Wall Street Journal reported that Banc de Binary which had been cited for unregistered options trading by US regulators posted an advertisement on a freelancing bulletin board offering more than 10 000 for crisis management of its Wikipedia page 116 In March 2015 The Washington Post reported that The New York Police Department had confirmed that at least some edits to Wikipedia entries about people who died following confrontations with NYPD officers were made from computers on the department s servers 117 In March 2019 HuffPost reported that Facebook Axios NBC News and Nextdoor have paid lawyer Ed Sussman to lobby for changes to their Wikipedia articles as well as the articles on Sheryl Sandberg Jonathan Swan Chuck Todd Andy Lack and Noah Oppenheim 118 119 In his October 2019 book Catch and Kill reporter Ronan Farrow reported that NBC News hired a Wikipedia whitewasher who removed references to NBC s role in the Weinstein case from several Wikipedia articles NBC does not dispute the allegation 120 In December 2019 The Wall Street Journal reported on paid conflict of interest editing by the reputation management company Status Labs regarding several of their clients including former Bank of America executive Omeed Malik and the health technology corporation Theranos 121 2020s Edit In May 2020 Le Monde reported on the blocking of about 200 Wikipedia accounts related to French PR companies 122 In August and September 2021 a plant based food company called This replaced images on the Bacon article with images of their own products the edits were quickly reverted and the account blocked 123 In November 2021 The Guardian reported on conflict of interest editing regarding billionaire Richard Desmond Attempts to remove the article s description of Desmond as a pornographer had been going on for years Lawyers hired by Desmond have argued for removal 124 In May 2022 Haaretz reported on conflict of interest editing mainly regarding Russian oligarchs 125 Reception EditCorporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement Edit Phil Gomes senior vice president of a PR firm named Edelman Digital created a Facebook group called Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement CREWE in January 2012 126 According to Gerard F Corbett CEO of the Public Relations Society of America CREWE is based on four principles 1 Corporate communicators want to do the right thing 2 communicators engaged in ethical practice have a lot to contribute 3 current Wikipedia policy does not fully understand numbers 1 and 2 because of the activities of some bad actors and a misunderstanding of public relations and 4 accurate Wikipedia entries are in the public interest 127 CREWE lobbies for greater involvement by PR professionals on the site with the stated goal of maintaining accurate articles about corporations Some Wikipedia editors including Jimmy Wales joined the group to discuss these issues 128 In an open letter to Wales Gomes argued that Wikipedia s prominence as a top search result adds a level of responsibility to be accurate Gomes also criticized allegedly inaccurate or outdated articles and the lack of timely response to issues raised in existing channels He further argued that allowing PR representatives to fix minor errors such as spelling grammar and facts leaves too much ambiguity about what are acceptable changes to make He made the comparison between PR editors and activists challenging that activists seem to enjoy much more latitude and argued that in certain situations direct editing of articles by PR reps was called for 129 CIPR and PRSA Edit In January 2012 the Chartered Institute of Public Relations CIPR in the UK began to collaborate with the regional Wikimedia UK chapter WMUK to provide guidance for CIPR members on how to interact with the Wikipedia community 130 Jane Wilson CIPR CEO said in February 2012 For the time being we may have to start with an acceptance that Wikipedians have a problem with our profession and this reputation has unfortunately been earned We can t change this overnight but by working in partnership with Wikimedia UK and Wikipedians through outreach diplomacy and dialogue we can make a difference 61 In January 2012 Gerard Corbett head of the Public Relations Society of America PRSA said We believe there is a case to be made for PR professionals to responsibly edit client Wikipedia entries in an ethical and transparent manner In June he commended CIPR for reaching a point of agreement with Wikipedia but said nothing has changed at all 131 International Association of Business Communicators Edit The International Association of Business Communicators IABC devoted their September 2012 CW Bulletin to paid editing on Wikipedia 132 PR pro Mark Estes said that As an advocate a public relations professional is accountable to his or her client or organization As a voice of social conscience however a public relations professional is accountable to the public at large Thus the innate conflict between the two identities The theory of responsible advocacy attempts to reconcile that conflict and provide guidance to achieve common ground 133 PR professional David King recommended collaborating with nothing to hide emphasizing transparency and the importance of not editing articles directly He explained When legal and marketing departments establish their corporate Wikipedia strategy or policy they often feel they are faced with only two choices Ignore one of the world s most influential websites with a hands off policy or engage in the risky controversial and ethically ambiguous practice of direct editing In some circumstances these are both good strategies but most companies can find more effective middle ground by engaging in PR or content marketing with Wikipedia s citizen journalists a safe and ethical way to make improvements that is valuable both for the organization and Wikipedia 134 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Richards Katie 11 June 2014 Companies Have Been Editing Wikipedia Pages To Make Themselves Look Better Business Insider Archived from the original on 14 June 2014 Retrieved 11 June 2014 Further reading Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia My WikiBiz Wikipedia Signpost 9 October 2006 Paid editing Wikipedia Signpost 15 June 2009 Does Wikipedia Pay Wikipedia Signpost series 2012 Wikipedia community discussion on paid editing 2009 Wikipedia community discussion on conflict of interest 2012 No paid advocacy talk Failed policy proposal November 2013 Paid editing policy proposal talk Failed policy proposal November 2013 Commercial editing essay talk Failed policy proposal turned into an essay November 2013 Conflict of interest limit talk Failed policy proposal as of December 2013 Wikimedia Foundation sends cease and desist letter to WikiPR Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner s response to paid advocacy editing and sockpuppetry Terms of Use Oppong Marvin 7 February 2014 Verdeckte PR in Wikipedia PDF Report in German Otto Brenner Stiftung ISSN 1863 6934 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia amp oldid 1132360687, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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