Wikipediocracy

This Washington DC nonprofit, dedicated to more transparency in government, has itself proven to be somewhat non-transparent. Especially in its relationship to Wikipedia. Even better, they did a poor job of hiding the COI editing of their own Wikipedia content.

Wikipedia's article about the Sunlight Foundation (T-H-L) was created on 31 July 2006, by a single purpose account who did nothing else. (Paul Blumenthal is presently a reporter for the Huffington Post, and "previously worked as the Senior Writer for the Sunlight Foundation".) Blumenthal cheerfully admitted as much on the article's talkpage, and it was ignored, except for a brief warning -- posted four years later.

Another single purpose account, Ebankey, did a number of major expansions of the article in June 2007. As this mailing list indicates, at the time one "Erin Bankey" (ebankey@sunlightfoundation.com) was an employee of the Sunlight Foundation. The editor was never warned at all.

Major funders of the Sunlight Foundation include:

• Venture-capital firm Omidyar Network (see below, they gave the WMF $2 million in August 2009)
  The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (which gave the WMF $500,000 in August 2009 and $800,000 in November 2010)
  The Ford Foundation (which gave the WMF $300,000 in July 2009)
  The Stanton Foundation (which gave the WMF $3.6 million in October 2011).

The Board of Trustees of the Sunlight Foundation includes:

• Michael Klein, co-founder, one of the best-connected lawyers in the corporate world, with close ties to California senator Dianne Feinstein
  Craig Newmark of Craigslist, longtime "friend" of the WMF
  Matt Halprin of the Omidyar Network, former WMF Board member
  Stacy Donohue, also with the Omidyar Network

The Foundation's Advisory Board includes:

• Jimmy Wales
  Larry Lessig of Creative Commons
  Yochai Benkler of the Berkman Center

Also, courtesy of Greg Kohs:

"Did you know that in the summer of 2010, the IP address 71.191.1.8 that geo-locates very close to the Sunlight Foundation's headquarters had a 100% focus on adding tons of content to the Wikipedia article about the Sunlight Foundation?

"Did you know that the Sunlight Foundation's project coordinator, Nicko Margolies, has extensively edited the Wikipedia article about the foundation?

"And let's not forget this IP editor 68.33.193.160, helping to add lots of stuff to the Sunlight Foundation article, all from a location in Washington DC, where Sunlight is headquartered.

"Good job, Matt Halprin and Jimmy Wales! Your communication of the Bright Line Rule to the folks on your Sunlight board has worked astoundingly well."

Indeed, the Sunlight Foundation Wikipedia article has been tagged as "reading like an advertisement" since May 2013.

See the Google/Creative Commons thread for more background.

(I'm trying to drop a hint here. If you want to make a stink about Wikipedia scandals, sending copies of the relevant information to the people listed in these threads might bring some results. At least they won't look at Jimmy with love and respect anymore, maybe.)

Somebody asked Jimbo about this.

Readers of the Sunlight Foundation's WP article used to be warned of its conflict of interest and advertising-like style. That is, until a couple of months after Eric started this thread. That's when a single-purpose IP address (from Australia) removed those tags, because he personally disagreed with them.

Critics will also note that one of the leading supporters of the Gibraltarpedia scandal also wanted to shut down discussion of the conflicts of interest surrounding the Sunlight Foundation's Wikipedia article. Oh, the hypocrisy.

Sunlight only works as a disinfectant if you let it in.