How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry
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How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry
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Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry
#2Although Wikipedia admins are generally pretty diligent about vanity articles about firms or individuals, anecdotally, I think people have a lot more luck astroturfing within legitimate articles. There are so many niche articles about some general concept with a weird section plugging an obscure product toward the end.
Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry
#3Maybe all of these victims can get their wish of Wikipedia notoriety on a page called “List of victims of Wikipedia article scams”
Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry
#4Perhaps I’m just getting old and weary and the scales are falling from my eyes, but the number of assholes in the world who are willing to destroy some valuable resource or community for a small benefit to themselves seems to be increasing, and also increasing their efforts and their effectiveness.
Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry
#5Getting an article created for you or your business is not some mysterious black box. Every article on Wikipedia has to follow WP:NOTE (notability guidelines)[1]. In short, it just means you have to have multiple sources directly about the subject, and these sources are independent from the subject of the article, and the sources are WP:RELIABLE (e.g., from a reputable source like a well known news publisher).
The only reason these guidelines exist is because all articles need to have references. No references, no article. The vast majority of deleted articles don't have any references. If you have just a couple references, that article is likely to float around in some gray area for a long time. There are articles on the site only a couple sentences long, but they have notable references, so they can't easily be deleted.
People mistakenly think that paying off an administrator is a golden ticket to getting on the site. They misunderstand that the majority of governance on the site is done in public, and often doesn't involve administrators at all. For example, I've been involved in a couple requests for article deletion (sometimes as the person requesting the deletion, sometimes not). In all my experiences, no administrator was involved in the debate. If there are good reasons to delete an article, a bribed administrator will simply be outvoted by the public.
^1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability
^2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources
Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry
#6Perhaps I’m just getting old and weary and the scales are falling from my eyes, but the number of assholes in the world who are willing to destroy some valuable resource or community for a small benefit to themselves seems to be increasing, and also increasing their efforts and their effectiveness.
You should take some pride that you made it this far. The world is just chock full of assholes, and for the most part the best you can hope for is to not notice.
A weird kind of solace but I hope it helps a little.
Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry
#7Perhaps I’m just getting old and weary and the scales are falling from my eyes, but the number of assholes in the world who are willing to destroy some valuable resource or community for a small benefit to themselves seems to be increasing, and also increasing their efforts and their effectiveness.
No, you and I just had the singular luck to exist at a time where computers were for weirdos, deviants, and dreamers. The internet was full of people who had naive ideas of what it would be used for and built beautiful and horrible things but they were built largely on ideology, not the banal mediocre lukewarm lawful neutral selfish tribal beige tyranny of the rest of the world. The technology is mature enough now that laws and rules and rent seeking and all the old power games are here and and will continue to increase in concentration.
At least we got to see something new.
Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry
#8It's great to see an article about spam where the spammers are losing and their customers are victims.
I used to spend a lot of time working on the Wikipedia conflict of interest notice board, [WP:COIN]. Hate mail. One lawsuit.
Here's my essay on that.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hints_on_dealing_wit...
Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry
#9Perhaps I’m just getting old and weary and the scales are falling from my eyes, but the number of assholes in the world who are willing to destroy some valuable resource or community for a small benefit to themselves seems to be increasing, and also increasing their efforts and their effectiveness.
It's not that their absolute number is increasing, these people have always been around, they just weren't able to do much damage to things that weren't physically near them before.
The internet changed everything, it has given these people the power to effortlessly destroy things created by anyone, anywhere on earth, no matter where they are or how many resources they have. Making the internet so easily accessible was a massive mistake.
Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry
#10Perhaps I’m just getting old and weary and the scales are falling from my eyes, but the number of assholes in the world who are willing to destroy some valuable resource or community for a small benefit to themselves seems to be increasing, and also increasing their efforts and their effectiveness.
It’s definitely gotten worse in politics over the last decade. It used to be the case I could look at politicians and hate their policies and values, but know that they were genuinely trying to shape their country into what they thought was best. Now it seems to be overtaken by shameless grifters who will happily tear everything down if it profits them in some way.