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  • We exist to shine the light of scrutiny into the dark crevices of Wikipedia and its related projects; to examine the corruption there, along with its structural flaws; and to inoculate the unsuspecting public against the torrent of misinformation, defamation, and general nonsense that issues forth from one of the world’s most frequently visited websites, the “encyclopedia that anyone can edit.”
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Attorney, or ambulance chaser? Susan Burke vs. Wikipedia

By E. A. Barbour and Gregory Kohs (with the assistance of several Wikipediocracy researchers)

Manipulation of Wikipedia content has been shown repeatedly to be orchestrated by the very insiders who run Wikipedia. Paid advocacy editors and political operatives who learn these tricks can also control Wikipedia with some effectiveness, and by taking advantage of the community’s obsession with secrecy and false transparency, agenda-driven alterations to article content can be made without becoming a magnet for wider attention and corrective editing. This can get especially ugly when editors use pseudonyms to hide their real-world accountability and begin to attack by name the reputations of living people via their Wikipedia biographies. It’s no surprise that Wikipedia’s most historically active page for edit warfare is the biography of George W. Bush. With Bush, at least numerous editors on each side of the political debate will keep watch on the biography, and they tend to balance each other out. But what happens when a less-prominent individual is defamed (or glorified) on Wikipedia by editors who use fake names to mask their identity?

Susan L. Burke, an attorney in private practice and a specialist in filing lawsuits against government contractor firms who were involved in the Iraq war, found her Wikipedia biography the locus of some alleged defamation by an anonymous person or persons. In her legal practice, one of Burke’s toughest adversaries has been the controversial Blackwater company. It is reasonable to suspect that at least some conservative and libertarian groups are politically aligned against Burke. The Wikipedia editor accounts that were of most concern to Burke were “Zujua” and “CapBasics359”. The problems began in December 2011 and ran until early 2013. Burke found some of the edits so offensive to her reputation that in September 2013 she pursued a legal case to unmask

…continue reading Attorney, or ambulance chaser? Susan Burke vs. Wikipedia

WikiConference USA bans critic from open meeting

By Yerucham Turing

A conference dedicated to talking about Wikipedia took place this weekend (May 30 to June 1) at the New York Law School in Tribeca. While the conference advertised itself as being “open to all participants” and welcoming “the skeptical”, one notable and vocal critic of the Wikimedia movement was very abruptly blocked from attending the conference. The critic of Wikipedia’s governance, Gregory Kohs, is the founder of MyWikiBiz, which since 2006 has been the first and longest-running enterprise dedicated to paid editing and content improvement focusing on Wikipedia. (When MyWikiBiz was founded, Wikipedia had no prohibition against editing its content in exchange for payment. Indeed, Wikipedia still has a Reward Board where cash is paid to writers.) Kohs had hoped to participate in the WikiConference in a session devoted to the pros and cons of paid editing, but the conference organizers headed him off at the pass only 18 hours before the conference began.

Kohs registered for the conference in late January, and he submitted for consideration by the selection committee a proposed presentation entitled “Confessions of a paid editor”. Proposals were to have been cut off on March 31, but on April 6 the deadline was extended to April 15. In all, three proposals were submitted related to the subject of paid editing on Wikipedia: the January 29 proposal from Kohs; a proposal from Susan Hewitt entitled “Why paid editing is a really bad idea”, submitted April 7; and a proposal from Dorothy Howard, entitled “Paid Editing Moderated Discussion”, submitted May 21 (more than a month after the already extended deadline had passed). Prior to the April 15 deadline, the only submission that received any “Interested attendees” was Kohs’ proposal.

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Ultimately, though, the only paid editing proposal

…continue reading WikiConference USA bans critic from open meeting