On Monday, November 4th, partly cloudy skies and cool temperatures engulf Barcelona, Spain, as Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales delivers a paid keynote speech to a conference of information technologists meeting at the Alfresco Summit. What Jimbo (as he is affectionately called online) will be leaving behind at Wikipedia are the heated arguments regarding a controversy about purportedly 250 "sockpuppet" editor accounts that stand accused of conflict-of-interest and paid advocacy editing. (That story was broken by Simon Owens at The Daily Dot .) That news spawned coverage in over 100 different media outlets, including TIME, BBC News, and Wall Street Journal. Many of the follow-up articles focused on concerns that Wikipedia is doomed, with editor churn a growing and intractable problem, and questions arising about whether an "anyone can edit" model can ever produce a truly neutral and reliable reference. Maybe Jimmy Wales' prophecy is coming true, where he said , "Given enough time humans will screw up Wikipedia just as they have screwed up everything else."
So, if his project has been corrupted by paid shills anyway, who can blame Jimbo for jetting off to the City of Counts when he's counting on what is likely a handsome five-figure payment for delivering about 60 minutes of talk?
What most of the world doesn't know, is that Jimmy Wales thinks he has a silver bullet to save Wikipedia from infiltration by money-hungry vampires who work in the form of undisclosed sockpuppet editors with paid agendas. He calls it his "Bright Line Rule". It is simply this:
"Do not edit Wikipedia articles directly if you are a paid advocate. Instead, contribute proposed edits to the talk page, and escalate to appropriate venues on Wikipedia if you are having trouble getting people's attention."
Jimmy Wales maintains that this will always work, for every corporate entity that is dissatisfied with its absence from Wikipedia, or frustrated by false or unfair documentation of the entity on Wikipedia. Jimbo says emphatically, "It is virtually impossible to find a case where a business has tried to do things correctly and failed to get good results. There is no need to directly edit the article, and it is a very poor approach to the issue and something that should never be suggested."
Alfresco edits its own Wikipedia article
If the Bright Line Rule is the correct way to get good results, and it's a very poor approach to directly edit a Wikipedia article about one's own employer, then we must fault Alfresco for directly editing its own Wikipedia article. Yes, the same Alfresco that will pay Jimmy Wales a handsome sum to come talk to them and their paid guests has shown disregard for Jimmy Wales' decree on paid advocacy editing. Alfresco is headquartered in the United Kingdom; a UK-based IP address with a laser focus on the subject of Alfresco created the Wikipedia article about Alfresco. But that was in 2005, long before Jimbo decided on his Bright Line Rule. Indeed, in late 2005, Jimmy Wales was found editing his own biographical entry on the English Wikipedia. We shouldn't hold Alfresco to a higher 2005 standard than Wikipedia's own co-founder held to.
But, Jimbo did reform and realize the error of his self-polishing editorial ways. And his Bright Line Rule began to evolve. In 2009, he said , "The idea that we should ever accept paid advocates directly editing Wikipedia is not ever going to be ok. Consider this to be policy as of right now." By early 2012, the Bright Line Rule was fully formed and stated as such :
"No editing of Wikipedia article space by paid advocates. There is absolutely no reason to ever do this - the talk pages, notice boards, wikiprojects, and OTRS provide ample opportunity for ethical engagement of Wikipedia. This is easy. The most common opposition to this comes from corrupt interests."
Jimbo's decree was communicated and announced by his supporters across the land and the sea, to all corners of the Earth. Certainly every user of the Internet by late 2012 had heard Jimbo's stance on editing with a conflict of interest. Or had they?
Here is Wikipedia's User:Cvitti directly editing the Alfresco article. The jury will note that Mr. Chris Vitti is Director of Websites & Marketing Technology at Alfresco. But can we be sure that Chris Vitti in the real world is also Cvitti in the Wiki world?
I reached out to Linsey McNew, Alfresco's Senior Manager of Global PR and Social Strategy, to ask her if Mr. Vitti had been editing Wikipedia about Alfresco. She replied:
"Chris has updated Alfresco_(software) 17 times in the past five years and 15 of the 17 edits were to update the latest version number of Alfresco, when a new version was released. The other two edits were to fix broken/out-dated links/info. Chris, like Alfresco, believes in honesty, openness and the spirit of the Wikipedia..."
To any reasonable person, that sounds fair enough, doesn't it? But Jimmy Wales isn't a reasonable person. When he says "there is absolutely no reason to ever do" what Chris Vitti had done, he means it! Or does he? On September 19, 2013, Jimmy Wales was asked for his opinion of Chris Vitti editing the article about Alfresco. Before Jimbo even deigned to respond, the question was "suppressed" by a Wikipedia administrator. This means that the content of the edit was literally made to disappear from any public view on Wikipedia! Why was it so dangerous to ask Jimmy Wales what he thinks of an Alfresco employee editing Wikipedia's article about Alfresco? When this question was presented to the great leader of Wikipedia, he took nearly a full day to craft his carefully-worded reply:
"It looks like it was revision deleted to remove libel. If you'd like to inquire about those allegations, you'd do best to contact me directly rather than publish falsehoods."
Hmm... Jimbo says that it is "libel" and a "falsehood" to say that Chris Vitti was editing Wikipedia about his employer. But Linsey McNew of Alfresco openly explained that Chris Vitti has, in fact, edited Wikipedia seventeen times about Alfresco. Whom should we believe?
But wait, there's more...
It would be one thing if Alfresco's editing of Wikipedia was a lonely exception to the rule of following Jimmy Wales' Bright Line policy about paid advocacy editing. But, alas, it appears that multitudes of people and organizations close to Jimmy Wales are fiddling away at their Wikipedia articles, even though Jimbo says "No!" to that activity. Maybe ignoring Jimmy Wales is the unwritten code beneath the Bright Line Rule?
Rather than bog down Examiner readers with several examples of suspicious paid advocacy editing taking place on Wikipedia by Jimmy Wales' pals and buddies, you can read the details at my Wikipediocracy blog post , published last week.
Really, anyone who looks into the edit histories of Wikipedia articles about living people, or corporations, or organizations will typically be able to find at least one editor who appears to have a conflict of interest with the entity.
Back to Barcelona
You know, the one "Diamond Sponsor" of the summit where Jimbo will speak today is Accenture. While some of their employees occasionally make minor edits to Wikipedia's article about Accenture, for the most part, one representative named Chris Pond has carefully followed the Bright Line Rule to execute needed changes to the article.
Here is how Accenture's article first took ugly shape on Wikipedia in August 2003:
"Accenture is the renamed management consulting division of Arthur Andersen, the accounting giant destroyed by its keystone role in many accounting scandals. Accenture shares the methods, ideology and ethics of its parent company, which makes it quite popular with those doing evil things."
That article was created by a Wikipedia user who would go on to make dozens more edits to Wikipedia, but then he got banned from Wikipedia for arguing too much about ethics with Jimmy Wales. Kind of fitting, isn't it?
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