Wikipedia bans PR firm offering paid edits to site

LONDON — Wikipedia has sent a cease-and-desist letter to a Texas PR company that offers to help clients by editing entries on the online encyclopaedia in their favour.

It follows an investigation lasting more than a year by Wikipedia’s own volunteer editors, which suggested that Wiki-PR, based in Austin, Texas, had created more than 300 “sockpuppet” accounts — fake profiles set up by people and companies — to edit entries about clients.

Wiki-PR has been banned from editing entries on Wikipedia since October because its paid advocacy breaches the site’s terms of use. The latest move from Wikipedia’s executive director Sue Gardner raises the stakes by banning any use of sockpuppet accounts that might have been created by the company.

The move against Wiki-PR is part of growing efforts by Wikipedia to block paid advocacy and sockpuppets on the site, which has grown since its beginning in January 2001 to encompass more than 30 million articles written in 290 languages.

Its importance rests on the fact that Wikipedia is often linked to as the source of information elsewhere on the web. That makes it highly ranked in search results: one of its articles will often figure in the top two or three results in a search for a related topic, meaning that people often rely on information they find there.

The law firm retained by Wikipedia accuses the PR company of misusing its trademark on its site, and notes that the ban could be ended if Wiki-PR divulges all the sockpuppet accounts it has created, a list of the articles it has edited, and pledges only to edit via disclosed accounts and adhere “as closely as possible” to Wikipedia’s editing policies.

On its site, the PR company says that it offers “the easy way to accurately tell your story on Wikipedia”. The site’s leadership page says that its cofounder, Mr Darius Fisher, “has built Wiki-PR into the largest Wikipedia consulting firm” after realising the importance of Wikipedia entries while working with a crisis communications consultant in San Francisco.

The company’s role in editing entries came to light after Wikipedia’s own volunteer editors carried out an investigation lasting more than a year which suggested that Wiki-PR had created more than 300 sockpuppet accounts that were being used to edit entries about companies. Hiring PR companies to edit Wikipedia entries is known as “meatpuppetry”.

Among companies whose entries are said to have been edited by the company are those for Priceline and the communications company Viacom.

Wikipedia sets great store on the idea that its entries should be presented from a “neutral point of view” and that they should be verifiable from external online sources.

“Sockpuppetry and meatpuppetry are especially harmful when used to disguise secret works of advocacy purchased by clients to promote a particular product, idea or agenda,” says Wikipedia’s lawyers in the letter to Wiki PR. It adds that the extra editing load required to root out such advocacy “squanders valuable volunteer time, to the detriment of the entire Wikipedia community”.

In a statement, Jordan French of Wiki-PR told the Guardian: “Wiki-PR is working with the Wikimedia foundation and its counsel to sort this out.” He said that it hoped to have further information in a week’s time. THE GUARDIAN