Wikipedia Fights Back Against Socking
from the sock-it-to-them dept
The idea that Wikipedia is dying has become one of the Internet's recurrent stories. Because something used by so many people every day is completely free and dependent on the selfless dedication of relatively few individuals, there is perhaps an underlying fear that it will disappear, and it will be our fault for not supporting it better. However, alongside major issues like the need for an influx of new contributors from more diverse backgrounds, one of the lesser-known challenges Wikipedia faces is the rise of "socking", or sock puppetry. Here's how Wikipedia defines the term:
The use of multiple Wikipedia user accounts for an improper purpose is called sock puppetry (often abbreviated in discussion as socking). Improper purposes include attempts to deceive or mislead other editors, disrupt discussions, distort consensus, avoid sanctions, or otherwise violate community standards and policies. The term comes from sock puppet, an object shaped roughly like a sock and used on the hand to create a character to entertain or inform. In Internet terminology it is an online identity used for deception.
One of the most frowned-upon forms of socking involves payments. A fascinating article in The Daily Dot reveals a company called Wiki-PR that offers exactly that:
Wiki-PR is no secret. Wikipedia admins have been aware of the company for some time. It openly boasts of its service on its website. Wiki-PR claims to have a "staff of 45 Wikipedia editors and admins helps you build a page that stands up to the scrutiny of Wikipedia's community rules and guidelines."
It's ironic, because a PR debacle is what Wiki-PR seems to be experiencing thanks to a major Wikipedia clampdown on socking, announced in this post by the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, Sue Gardner:
It claims a roster of 12,000 clients and offers them this ironic warning: "Don't get caught in a PR debacle editing your own page."Editors on the English Wikipedia are currently investigating allegations of suspicious edits and sockpuppetry (i.e. using online identities for purposes of deception). At this point, as reported, it looks like a number of user accounts -- perhaps as many as several hundred -- may have been paid to write articles on Wikipedia promoting organizations or products, and have been violating numerous site policies and guidelines, including prohibitions against sockpuppetry and undisclosed conflicts of interest. As a result, Wikipedians aiming to protect the projects against non-neutral editing have blocked or banned more than 250 user accounts.
She goes on to explain why paid advocacy is a problem:
Editing-for-pay has been a divisive topic inside Wikipedia for many years, particularly when the edits to articles are promotional in nature. Unlike a university professor editing Wikipedia articles in their area of expertise, paid editing for promotional purposes, or paid advocacy editing as we call it, is extremely problematic. We consider it a "black hat" practice. Paid advocacy editing violates the core principles that have made Wikipedia so valuable for so many people.
What's interesting about this episode -- aside from all the details revealed by The Daily Dot investigation -- is that it raises some key questions about what Wikipedia is and what it is trying to do. For example, when does an article about a company become promotional material? What if a PR person is genuinely correcting incorrect info? Can they do so ethically? More generally, what kind of subjects should be included? Wikipedia uses the idea of "notability", but what does that mean? Would paying Wikipedia contributors help to bring in the much-needed new blood to re-invigorate the project, or would it simply lead to yet more socking? Those are questions worth pondering and answering because, for all the concerns about Wikipedia's future, few have any doubts about its value and importance -- both to the Internet, and indeed to modern society.
What is clear to everyone is that all material on Wikipedia needs to adhere to Wikipedia’s editorial policies, including those on neutrality and verifiability. It is also clear that companies that engage in unethical practices on Wikipedia risk seriously damaging their own reputations. In general, companies engaging in self-promotional activities on Wikipedia have come under heavy criticism from the press and the general public, with their actions widely viewed as inconsistent with Wikipedia's educational mission.
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Filed Under: knowledge, pr, socking, sockpuppets, wikipedia
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Sometimes the editors are over-aggressive
I have some experience with Wikipedia editors and it left a bad taste in my mouth. A while back I was involved in a Linux distro and I prepared a Wikipedia page about it. A short one, just a few paragraphs. It was entirely 100% true and correct, not promotional in tone (just descriptive) and fully cited.A few weeks later the page was deleted because one of the editors saw posts from me on that distros forum. You see, I used the same username on both places because I wasn't hiding that I had involvement with the distro. That was the only reason.
I tried to "appeal" but it all fell on deaf ears. I could barely get anyone there to even respond, much less help. A few weeks or months (not really sure) someone else made another page for the distro that was worded differently but had almost exactly the same content (and citations) for that matter. And that one was a-okay.
At that point I let the matter drop, but I do recall feeling pretty pissed off and powerless at the time.
Not sure there's really a point here, just sharing my experience.
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At some point I think we will need to start banning corporate IP ranges from these websites. Thats what they like to have governments do. Maybe a little medicine is in order.
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The real issue is that what's written should be neutral (both in the non-advocacy sense and in the cover-all-sides sense) and factual. So long as those things are true, it doesn't matter one bit who it was that wrote it.
After all, there are a lot of dirty rotten liars who aren't part of a corporation or PR department at all.
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Sometimes the editors are over-aggressive
A few weeks later the page was deleted because one of the editors saw posts from me on that distros forum. You see, I used the same username on both places because I wasn't hiding that I had involvement with the distro. That was the only reason.
I tried to "appeal" but it all fell on deaf ears. I could barely get anyone there to even respond, much less help. A few weeks or months (not really sure) someone else made another page for the distro that was worded differently but had almost exactly the same content (and citations) for that matter. And that one was a-okay.
At that point I let the matter drop, but I do recall feeling pretty pissed off and powerless at the time.
Not sure there's really a point here, just sharing my experience.
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Re: Sometimes the editors are over-aggressive
So if that is the only reason, I wouldn't fret much about it, it seams reasonable to not let people to close to something edit things related to it, for all the well know reasons strong chance of unintentional bias distorting views, malicious intent, too much passion and so forth.
Have you tried editing others that you were not part of it?
God knows that there are many things that annoy me, but I learned to let go.
e.g.:
- Enforcement of "one topic per theme" on forums. Is dumb because forces users to find things and hope they are searching for it using the same terms others used to describe the same thing, needless to say this is not what happens in real life, further it deprives themselves from vital statistics about what is occurying, instead of deleting repeated threads count them and you get a picture of what is the most important issues at that time, how long it kept happening, how fast it did to happen etc. Losing all that information because you need to keep it "clean" doesn't seem that smart to me.
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Re: Sometimes the editors are over-aggressive
seems the 'admins' form a clique and use their positions to freeze out people/newbies they don't like, REGARDLESS of the content of their posts...
seems like wikipedia is developing a gatekeeper problem...
*beyond* that, there are some fundamental illogical flaws: everything has to be 'sourced' (which is kind of meaningless: the 'sources' can be Jim-bob's monthly newsletter, or Science magazine, both equally valid sources), as well as rejecting all kinds of info which is true and valid, but which they deem 'unsourced' or otherwise tainted...
for example, there was one super-nerd guy who merited a bio on wikipedia who was trying to correct some factoids about HIMSELF, but they weren't accepted BECAUSE HE COULDN'T CITE A 'SOURCE' ! ! !
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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There aren't "PR People"
They should suffer the fate of the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
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Socking?
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Re: Socking?
"Socking" sounds dirtier, and vaguely masturbatory, and is therefore more appropriate.
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I've always thought this was called puppetry.
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I can tell someone who's an expert in a given field, has written quite a few articles on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia embodies the best of humanity. Making education as low cost and widely available as possible. An organization looking to help humanity, not exploit it's people.
I have no problem with the Wikipedia staff being payed a salary. Similar to how TOR is funded by donations and grants. Then the staff get's a salary for running the operation.
Paying the community (world) to edit the very service that they themselves use, does seem to go against the spirit of the Wikipedia project. A little.
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Fight it or fix it ?? which would be better ?
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Several examples of utter failure to use consensus and standard verification of facts, omissions, and other user generated contributions exist on Wikipedia. Thank god it's done behind the scenes, or no one not already part of it would take it seriously.
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Not sure what you're trying to say. Kinda lost me there.
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I always thought it was more common for people who didn't like something to edit it's page to slander it?
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Give Wikipedia your money, donations are open any time with seven week long campaigns every other month.
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The proof needed to be found guilty is low to coincidental.
The thing is, later the person who accused everyone of being a puppet was found to be paid by Microsoft and had his account banned for numerous arguments and unrealistic edits. He was banned from Wikipedia. I now shy away from any hot topics.
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