In an internal investigation codenamed “Orangemoody”, Wikipedia’s staff has banned 381 “sockpuppet” accounts it suspects of being controlled by the same group of users practicing a paid-for editing policy.
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The case is still on-going, presumably as editors try to weed out any more compromised articles and figure out who is behind it. And like everything on Wikipedia, this process is entirely transparent too.
The editors also deleted 210 articles created by the accounts.
Explains the discussion page: “This list is not considered complete; due to time constraints, there may be additional articles created by these socks that are not included here”.
However, in 2013, 323 sockpuppet accounts were discovered and banned in a case involving Wiki-PR. Such editors with a conflict of interest are advised not to edit articles in which they would have an interest as a result.
Additionally, numerous deleted pages were also of various startups.
Wikipedia’s CheckUser team found that the banned accounts, run by so-called “sockpuppets”, were active between April and August this year – but could have been operating for some time longer. In some cases, the victims would then be charged up to $30 to stop the page being taken down or edited. “The return to demand further money to “protect” the article is also significant, and we do have examples of socks proceeding to request deletion of pages”.
However, it’s worth noting here that not all paid editing contravenes Wikipedia rules – some PR firms have signed an agreement with the Wikimedia Foundation that assert they will adhere to the paid-editing guidelines, while other public organizations such as universities have employees that update information on the encyclopedia. Those guidelines, developed after the fallout from the Wiki-PR scandal, basically detail how PR firms are to behave ethically when needing to make changes about people or organizations they represent. “As part of these obligations, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation”.
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What’s interesting is that the edits made by these “sockpuppet” accounts were similar to each other.
