Wikipedia has threatened a Texas-based public relations company of dragging it to court after the online encyclopedia found out that Wiki-PR was involved in creating promotional content for its clients on the online encyclopedia.
Wiki-PR has been charging up to $1,000 (£620) from businesses for writing Wikipedia articles for them. This does not comply with Wikimedia Community’s terms and conditions. The free encyclopedia called in lawyers when it was found that more than 300 “sock puppet” accounts which were created using false identities that were traced to a single public relations firm.
A spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, Matthew Roth, said that the foundation has sent a “cease and desist” letter to the PR firm. The PR Company was also found practicing “meatpuppetry”, where a user with a false identity is invited into an online discussion just to support the argument of the invitee. In October the foundation banned some 250 sock puppet accounts.
The foundation’s warning letter sent to the PR company read “We have come to the opinion that, based on the evidence we have to date, that agent(s) of your company have engaged in sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry to, among other things, make it appear as if certain articles are written by unbiased sources when in fact those articles are authored by Wiki-PR for money.”
Executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, Sue Gardner, said in the foundation’s statement: “It looks like a number of user accounts – perhaps as many as several hundred – may have been paid to write articles on Wikipedia promoting organisations or products, and have been violating numerous site policies and guidelines.”
WiKi-PR hasn’t officially commented on this.
