By Gregory Kohs

Over the past few weeks, the worldwide media has finally cottoned to the fact that certain leaders and members of the non-profit Wikimedia UK charity have been exploiting Wikipedia on the side for personal financial gain. Wikimedia UK director and trustee, Roger Bamkin, has been marketing his Victuallers Ltd consulting service to paying clients like the town of Monmouth, Wales and the territory of Gibraltar.

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These clients signed up with Bamkin in the hopes that he would inspire more editors to create glowing Wikipedia articles that would help boost tourism in those locales. And he did successfully manipulate Wikipedia to the pleasure of his clients, judging by the ample evidence presented on Wikipedia, on the Wikimedia UK’s mailing list, and on the leading Wikipedia criticism site,Wikipediocracy.* Now that some of the most widely-read news organizations in Spain, inFrance, in America, and finally in the United Kingdom itself have documented the corruption taking place — indeed, in the month of August alone, Bamkin and his business affiliates were able to boost Gibraltar factoids to be featured on the front page of Wikipedia an astonishing 17 times — the pressure mounted on the Victuallers racket. It was a public relations dream for Monmouth’s and Gibraltar’s tourism interests, until it turned into a media nightmare for Bamkin and his fellow Wikipedians, Maximilian Klein, John Cummings,Steve Virgin, and the pseudonymous editor “Prioryman”, who even announced publicly his October travel plans to Gibraltar, too.

Roger Bamkin has resigned his “volunteer” post with the Wikimedia UK.

Where other media would essentially conclude now their coverage of this scandal, the Wiki Edits Examiner endeavors to reveal to the reader the various layers of denial and cover-up that have already begun within the Wikipedia community. As we

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