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Why there is no end to the Gibraltarpedia scandal – or Jimmy Wales’ silence.

Posted on October 21st, 2012 7 comments - (Comments closed)

By Andreas Kolbe

See also Cover-up begins in Wikipedia’s Gibraltar scandal

The English Wikipedia and Wikimedia UK came in for criticism in the media last month over the Gibraltarpedia PR scandal. Roger Bamkin, a Wikimedia UK trustee and former chairman of the British charity supporting the Wikipedia website, had taken up a paid consultancy position for the government of Gibraltar, in a project designed “to market Gibraltar as a tourist product through Wikipedia”.

As an article in Wikipedia’s internal newsletter, The Signpost, reported, controversy focused specifically on the number of Gibraltar-related articles appearing in the “Did You Know …” (“DYK”) section of Wikipedia’s main page. This section of the Wikipedia main page features new work added to Wikipedia. Roger Bamkin had taken an active role in ensuring that articles related to his project appeared there, on Wikipedia’s most visible page, in a way that “seemed to some observers to blur his roles as a Wikimedia UK trustee, a paid consultant for the projects’ government partners, and an editor of the English Wikipedia”.

As reported in The Telegraph, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales expressed the view that having 17 Gibraltar DYKs in August, more than any other topic bar the Olympics, was “absurd”, and that it would be “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 Wikipedia or anywhere else.”

The reach of Wikipedia’s front page should not be underestimated: it receives around 10 million views a day. A 2010 article noted that

Over the weekend, prominent placement on Wikipedia’s main page launched a nearly twenty-year-old Time magazine article about Scientology onto the Time site’s “most-read” list. The jump

…continue reading Why there is no end to the Gibraltarpedia scandal – or Jimmy Wales’ silence.

Tags: , , , , , | Category: Bureaucracy, Uncategorized

Cover-up begins in Wikipedia’s Gibraltar scandal

Posted on October 10th, 2012 3 comments - (Comments closed)

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

…continue reading Cover-up begins in Wikipedia’s Gibraltar scandal

Tags: , , , , , , , | Category: Bureaucracy, Uncategorized