Talk:Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia/Archive 2

Detailed analysis
This German-based report apparently offers a systematic analysis of conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia by PR reps, however the machine translation I used was not good enough to make it very readable, so I gave up on trying to understand what it says. CorporateM (Talk) 16:17, 31 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Google Translate provides this rather poor translation of the abstract, but it does give an idea of the contents: "The fact that this openness can also have downsides, shows a current Case : Hundreds of 'Paid Editor ' - ie paid commercial writer - are in the tight - lish Wikipedia behalf of their clients operate more polished image and Article have been distorted . Wikipedia thereupon blocked over 250 user profiles. this shows that there seems to be more than a mere suspicion that the reference is increasingly perceived as a PR tool and used. The enormous importance wakestion of Wikipedia as an information, guidance and interpretation of source Greed in companies, celebrities and other public actors reindeer, exert on the electronic ' world knowledge' influence. It is surprising in this context that concealed PR in Wikipedia so far both in science and in journalism , with little attention ness has been investigated . Most individual cases were discussed , too rarely been de to the topic comprehensively and systematically approached . The present study attempts to fill this gap and to make clear which actors with what means try in their favor on Wikipedia content influence to NEH-men"

It would be nice if a German-speaking human being could take a stab at this. Coretheapple (talk) 22:33, 4 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Maybe we could ask one of those "celebrities and other public actors reindeer" to do the translation? :-)  23:06, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

RfC: Terms of Use and paid editing/advocacy, legal or not?

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


 * Terms of Use ban paid edition/advocacy?
 * If yes,
 * Then it is illegal and WMF can sue the companies and freelancers related?
 * Why WMF dont sue the companies?
 * If not,
 * then why WikiExperts and Wiki-PR changed his services and now outsource the edits?
 * Why the another companies not?
 * Why Wikimedia Foundation dont ban it?
 * If in a future, Terms of Use include ban paid edition/advocacy explicitly, then its illegal, and WMF can sue the paid editors?
 * All paid edition are covert advertising, and therefore, is illegal in Europe, among Directive 2005/29/EC?
 * Are a future COI policy, or the actual guideline irrelevant because paid editing/advocacy editors can argue WP:IAR? JackT7 (talk) 10:26, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Speedy Close You seem to be requesting our opinions on the legality of certain actions. An RfC is not the place to make legal judgements. Maybe ask this on some stack exchange site or something? I suggest closing the RfC. 0x0077BE  talk /contrib ] 01:35, 14 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Links to failed proposals
left the following message on my Talk page, and with that user's permission, it is copied here. Jytdog (talk) 21:29, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello there,

I received a message today that you have reverted me on the Wikipedia-conflict-of-interest topic; may I ask if you can explain to me your reasoning for doing this? I'm afraid that keeping those links in may serve to bias the article from a Wikipedian point of view, as Wikipedians are wont to do, because the proposals primarily point out the merits and demerits of allow conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia rather than leaving the outside reader to judge it for hisself/herself. The proposals by nature are non-neutral, and including them in the article would violate Wikipedia's spirit of "No original research" and "Neutral Point of View". Cheers, --TeleComNasSprVen (talk &bull; contribs) 08:04, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I do not agree and would be happy to discuss! May I copy your content to the article Talk page, and respond there? Jytdog (talk) 12:15, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Sure! You may copy any part of my message as you wish. --TeleComNasSprVen (talk &bull; contribs) 15:12, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Answering now! So the reason I reverted that change, is that I think it is really important to have those failed proposals linked here.  They were the community's reaction to these incidents, and the Talk pages associated with them contain the community's discussion of the breadth of the community's reaction.  The fact that they all failed, should be a sign to anybody that the community is not unified in any way with regard to these events.  Thank you for not re-reverting and for Talking instead! Jytdog (talk) 21:29, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms
Hey, I added a link to the Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms because I have gone looking for that several times and have hard time finding it, and for some reason always come here first expecting to find it, as it very germane to the topic of this article. I checked Manual_of_Style/Layout before I added it, and found no bar to adding links to Wikipedia space there. I also found no discussion of adding that or not, here on Talk. You just reverted it, and your edit note says "rm ink to non-article-space page". Would you please point me to the policy or guideline on which that is based? I may well have missed something. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 14:52, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Your own paid Wikipedia editor, the next status symbol?
Lately there's been a spate of cases where people with money are hiring their own paid editors to buff up their Wikipedia articles. Recent examples that have come up at WP:COIN include Henry Lin Yu, Lowell Milken, Michael Milken, and Jerry Yang. This may be a new status symbol. Something to watch for. (I miss the days when the big COI problem was band and DJ self promotion. Those were easier to deal with.) John Nagle (talk) 06:38, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Old Conflict of Interest dispute
So, I found this in the 2008 presidential election section left as a comment. Looks like it's fairly old, no idea who it's by, if anyone wants to discuss it/fix it/add it/whatever, here it is: can't see how the following is an example of COI editing: "TitianGate" was a 2009 incident in which UK leader Gordon Brown compared himself to the Italian Renaissance artist Titian who was known for his late-in-life achievements and longevity. Brown said that Titian lived until 90, which was also stated in Titian's Wikipedia article. Conservative leader David Cameron said Titian did not in fact live that long, and pointed out the event as an example Brown's tendency for inaccuracy. Shortly after Cameron's comments, Titian's article on Wikipedia was edited to reduce his age; a search of the IP address that made the edit tracked back to the Conservative Party central office.

End --Padenton (talk) 03:17, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Well covered at the time - Signpost I think, and Talk:Titian. The edits lasted about an hour. Water under the bridge now. Johnbod (talk) 04:53, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

The Babasalichai case
I wonder if the sockpuppet Babasalichai case is worthy of inclusion in this article? User:Babasalichai was a sockfarm from about 2010 to the present whose purpose was originally to spruce up the biographies of the clients of PR firm 5WPR, run by Ronn Torossian. Just yesterday, Torossian opened an account in his own name, which was immediately identified as a sock from the same farm, and was closed down. He thus confirmed that he was the puppeteer in this case.

In 2011, Babasalichai socks made a series of defamatory edits to the biographies of Shmuley Boteach and Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto. It turned out that both these people were former clients of Torossian's and had parted from the PR firm on unfriendly terms. The incident was reported in this NYTimes article and this blogpost by the left-wing Jewish organization FailedMessiah. I believe it was also picked up by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, though I can't find the reference.

In 2008, Torossian used a similar sockpuppetry tactic to support his client Agriprocessors. The story is covered in our article.

If others think this episode is worthy of inclusion, I would be glad to try to write it up. User:Diannaa was involved in containing the sock farm, and I would especially be interested in her input. --Ravpapa (talk) 06:34, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Finsbury
Just noting here that Finsbury (public relations) has just been created. Philafrenzy (talk) 23:20, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Scandals by type
Category:Scandals by type is a container cat (no articles). Unsure of appropriate subcat. --Slivicon (talk) 00:44, 29 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I moved it to Category:Education scandals and controversies. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 08:47, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Things we need to add

 * Sunshine Sachs
 * http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/business/media/a-pr-firm-alters-the-wiki-reality-of-its-star-clients.html


 * Medtronic
 * http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/wikipedia-editors-for-pay/393926/


 * Orangemoody ✅
 * http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/wikipedia-rocked-by-rogue-editors-blackmail-scam-targeting-small-businesses-and-celebrities-10481993.html
 * http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3219380/Blackmail-scandal-hits-Wikipedia-rogue-editors-charge-hundreds-pounds-protect-people-s-pages-defamatory-content.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:647:CD01:9801:ED31:B192:BE3B:BCBE (talk) 14:48, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Ocaasit &#124; c 13:56, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

weasel words and WP:NAVEL in orangemoody subsection
As mentioned at WP:COIN, personally I'm against wikipedians, on-wiki, using real-world lingo, which might have legal ramifications. Here my attempt at a neutral encyclopedic description of the orangemoody fiasco, written with a general readership in mind, that may never have clicked 'edit' at the top of the page, and even if they have done so, may very well all the same never have heard wiki-jargon about SPI and LTA and all that jazz:

During the regular course of wikipedia editing, it was gradually noticed that individuals (article creators) who were editing articles about themselves or their companies, were reporting that they received unwelcome demands. Although editing articles about yourself, or your employer, is strongly discouraged by wikipedia guidelines (it is referred to as 'WP:COI' in wikipedia jargon as an analogy to real-world conflict-of-interest guidelines), it is not forbidden. There are certain mechanisms in place, these article creators were in the majority of cases, completely following the usual wikipedia rules, by seeking disinterested independent wikipedia volunteer review of their work, and putting their draft-articles through the queue managed by Articles For Creation volunteers. Like almost everything on wikipedia, this queue for article-creators that need disinterested reviewers, is publicly visible; allegedly, some of the article-creators were being approached outside of wikipedia (through email or telephone for instance), by people claiming to be wikipedians. In more than one case, the article-creators so approached, were later complaining visibly on wikipedia (sometimes to wikipedia administrators that help run the website and enforce the wikipedia rules -- when editors cannot work out problems amongst themselves) about the alleged off-wikipedia contacts.

In particular, there were complaints from the article-creators that the people contacting them outside of wikipedia, had been copying article-material without attribution (a violation of the wikipedia content-license), had been asking for money to work on the articles being created (a violation of the wikipedia terms of use when such financial connections are not prominently disclosed), and even in some cases asserting that the created-articles would be deleted (or technically speaking hidden from easy view into wikipedia's edit-history where only wikipedia administrators can view the material) unless regular payments changed hands. Almost all of these are violations of the wikipedia rules; some, such as infringing on the wikipedia content license, and non-compliance with the wikipedia terms of use, might also have legal ramifications. Even the contact-mechanism is considered to be against the rules on wikipedia; there are specific wikipedia rules (designed to thwart off-wikipedia coordination of agenda-driven or financially-motivated or otherwise illicit collusion), that wikipedians should discuss article-content inside wikipedia itself, where their comments and interactions are visible to others. This rule against abusing off-wikipedia contact is also important for practical reasons; because the website is open to all ("the encyclopedia anyone can edit" is the catchphrase), wikipedia permits contributors to remain anonymous if they wish, or to use pseudonyms for their usernames; in such cases, even to 99% of wikipedia administrators, there is no way to know which human is editing under a particular online persona.

Later, efforts by wikipedia volunteers and wikipedia administrators (including some the 1% of wikipedia administrators with 'checkuser' permissions who can directly examine the wikipedia webserver logs to see what computer systems wikipedia contributors are actually using), gave preliminary confirmation to all the problematic allegations mentioned, and in addition, revealed that many of the nominally-separate instances of off-wikipedia contact were extremely likely to be 'sockpuppet' editing. On wikipedia, there is special jargon for agenda-driven and financially-compensated editors that masquerade as more than one person, using a series of pseudonyms to mask their activity from all but the 'checkuser' wikipedia administrators, who can examine the privacy-sensitive information contained in the raw webserver logfiles: when a wikipedia editor uses multiple pseudonyms to hide there activities from wikipedia administrators, their primary username is called a 'sockmaster' and their secondary faux-usernames are called 'sockpuppets'. This wikipedia jargon is from the analogy of a single person putting on a puppet show, and playing different personas, by repeatedly wearing a series of different puppets -- made of socks with yarn and googly eyes traditionally -- on their hands. In the real-life puppet show, the lefthand sockpuppet and the righthand sockpuppet often have conversations. In the wikipedia analogy, the pseudonyms SuperSockLady5293 and SadSockMan2990 will make coordinated edits, and in some cases have faux 'conversations' with each other on wikipedia article-discussion pages, but in reality the same human is controlling both. In cases where a small number of humans are controlling and coordinating a large number of faux pseudonyms, the wikipedia jargon for the situation is to call that a 'sockfarm' because unlike a physical puppet show, with online-pseudonym-sockpuppets, there is effectively no limit to how many faux personas can be active simultaneously.

During the months of July and August 2015, wikipedia volunteers and administrators uncovered a sockfarm of nearly 400 pseudonyms, which were connected to the violations of wikipedia policy mentioned, using the computerized audit-data in the webserver logfiles, and by correlating that information with conversations (including faux 'conversations' between sockpuppet-usernames). The exact number of actual humans operating this large pseudonym-sockfarm is unknown; it is easy to tell from computerized logfiles how many *computers* were involved, and their type and physical location, but not necessarily how many biological humans were behind those computer systems. After concluding their efforts to uncover wikipedia rules violations, a large number of the accounts were blocked, and a large number of articles deleted, as being in violation of wikipedia rules about behavior, and wikipedia rules about acceptable content, respectively.

A fifth paragraph is needed, as well. The story was picked up by the media (very much including the WMF communications-director as a member thereof), and variously characterized, per WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV, as


 * "engaged in undisclosed paid advocacy... accepting or charging money to promote external interests on Wikipedia without revealing their affiliation, in violation of [ToU]"
 * "suspect editing"
 * "dishonest editing"
 * "black hat paid editors"
 * "sting... paid editing"
 * "PR network"
 * "'rogue' editors... 'blackmail' scam"
 * "faux contributors... fraud and extortion"
 * "sockpuppet...extortion"
 * "banned... huge fraud... amounts to a protection and extortion racket"

Now, individual wikipedians, commenting on individual talkpages, and note well dear reader not actually being quoted in wiki-reliable sources, have often used even more inflammatory language, as pseudonym-protected individual fans of specific internet websites often will, when they feel their particular 'fave' website is threatened: unlike the wikimedia foundation, who was careful to stick just to the facts (plus a modicum of PR-spew), and unlike even the newspapers, who profit from clicks and are thus motivated to use "colorful" language (especially when they can merely report a quotation attributable to Somebody Else's Legal Neck-On-The-Line), some individual wikipedians have gone beyond what even the newspapers were willing to print, calling the incident "shakedown[s]", and even "racketering"(sic) in the presumed privacy... but not ACTUAL privacy since all such pages are visible worldwide ... of the various discussion-pages beneath the mainspace-surface, here on the 'pedia.

Nowadays, there is even a mainspace-paragraph about the overall incident, in a special wikipedia-the-encyclopedia article, found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing_on_Wikipedia#Orangemoody, which uses a combination of the language of the churnalists, as well as some WP:EDITORIALIZING and some WP:PUFFERY, citing exactly one single source for the entire paragraph, which looks like this at present:

That singular source-newspaper *actually* refers to the now-blocked-accounts as 'fraudsters' (as well as 'scammers or scammer', and also 'suspect accounts'), to the event as a 'scam' (as well as 'demands for hundreds of pounds'), and to the victims as 'target[ed]' (as well as '[small] businesses and [minor] celebrities'), and the LTA work as an 'investigation' (as well as 'crackdown'). However, most of the juicy terminology, is utilized by quotations from *others* referring to "rogue editors", "coordinated group" , "protect[ion]" , "sock puppets" , and so on. Even their bit about blackmail is later qualified, and attributed back onto the WMF: "In some cases, the requests for money amounted to blackmail, Wikipedia told The Independent." Also, the heart of the analogy to a real-life protection scam, is NOT given in the journalist's voice, but again pushed back onto the WMF: "in some cases the scammers themselves may have been the ones causing the articles to be removed. According to a Wikipedia insider, at this stage the scammers would demand a payment of up to several hundred pounds... in some cases demanded an on-going monthly payment to 'protect' the articles."

Notice all those weasel words, being used by the journalist? Not an accident. They are covering their asses, and the asses of their publisher, the newspaper conglomerate. Even the use of 'victims' is retroactively attributed to the WMF: "But Wikipedia has called on its users to 'be kind to the article subjects', describing them as the 'victims in this situation'." Then, the article goes on to give actual investigative journalism... ahhh, the dying breed!... and actually did the legwork by contacting ten article-subjects, one who confirmed they paid actual money. But the key problem here, is that the wikipedia-mainspace-paragraph, is using WIKIPEDIA'S voice (as an encyclopedia-publisher) to mouth terms, and that said terms were QUOTATIONS from a churnalistic source, who was merely repeating the ANONYMOUS COMMENTARY OF WIKIPEDIA 'INSIDER' SOURCES the newspaper interviewed for the story ... and thus plenty of this mainspace paragraph fails WP:NAVEL and WP:CIRCULAR, not merely WP:NPOV. If someone can please help me cut down my too-long-per-WP:UNDUE-prose, and integrate the *other* sources (some more inflammatory and some less inflammatory than the singular source we currently use in mainspace), that would be appreciated.

p.s. I bleepity bleep the orangemoody-socks too. :-)   But we have to stick to NPOV, and avoid circular-self-quotations in wikipedia's voice.

p.p.s. Other hits:   and probably the most bitter-but-funny 'oh nohz' headline I have seen in awhile.  I've not checked all of these are non-dupe and pure-WP:RS, but I think 63.8% of this hit-list will end up being legit additional sources, YMMV. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 12:46, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I read this analysis about "legal ramifications" but I disagree. I'm going with what WMF policy: intermediary liability has to say about WMF's insulation from concerns about user-created content hosted on the site. Which is to say, 99.99% of Wikipedia's contents. According to the WMF transparency report (linked), guess how many of the 234 requests for content alteration were acted on last year? Zero. Newspapers are in a very different position as to responsibility for their contents than WMF. So your grave concerns about hurting the feelings of fraudsters and scammers is misplaced. Yah, some butt-hurt scammer could theoretically go after an individual editor, if they could figure out who introduced a particular phrase, and could figure out who the individual was, and both parties were within the proper jurisdiction, and they decided this individual has the wherewithal to make them whole in a civil matter (moolah), and the backsplatter of publicity from such an action is worth it. Which is another way of saying it will never happen. Even if it did, they'd have to make some additional hurdles in court to make it stick, and there would probably be civil liberties/free speech orgs lined up around the block to prevent just this from happening. And one more thing, "I was shaken down" is in the title of one of the sources currently cited at Draft:Orangemoody Wikipedia editing ring. Words like "shakedown" and "blackmail" are completely appropriate and actually near-verbatim reporting of what the secondary sources have said in this case, and I have no qualms about using them. — Brianhe (talk) 01:33, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It was a long analysis, so I do thank you for reading it, though we disagree at the end. My worry is very straightforward:  that one of the 381 socks, turns out to be not guilty of any of those strong-legalese-words, and decides to take legal action.  I don't think such legal action would succeed, per WMF insulation, but I do think it would hurt wikipedia's reputation even if the hypothetical legal action were to merely occur.  Outcome would be irrelevant; the mere initiation would be enough to get wikipedia 'convicted in the court of public opinion' methinks.  Also, though I do believe that there is a possibility of this hypothetical lawsuit related to orangemoody specifically, I'm more worried about future incidents.  If we set the precedent that checkuser-tech-evidence, and newspapers who repeat back verbatim what wiki-insiders told them, are WP:RS when it comes to making outbound-NLT-allegations in wikipedia's voice, we are setting ourselves up to get bitten eventually.
 * As to your other point, I'm mostly concerned about hurting the feelings of hypothetical innocent-or-quasi-innocent editors, that get caught up in future stings, by mistake. I'm pretty indifferent to what feelings alleged scammers and alleged blackmailers and alleged shakedown artists, might be having... but as a practical matter, it is more important for us to concentrate on hitting them where it hurts, which is their wallets, not their tender words-can-hurt-me-feelings.  Our interests as wikipedians are best served by preventing alleged-spammers from spamming wikipedia, not by calling them names, but by making it economically prohibitive for them to operate here.  Similarly, our interests are best served by preventing alleged-extortionists from operating here, again not by calling them names, but by making it economically infeasible for them to profit here.  Alleged-spammers may never go away, since a victim of spam merely needs to *see* their spammy-product to profit them... but alleged-extortionists are much more vulnerable, since they have to forge a relatively-long-term relationship with their target-victims.  I suggest we ditch the name-calling, and focus on the practical vulnerabilities of the alleged-extortionists, by shoring up our security perimeter and such.  Words will never hurt them, but lost profits will cause them to go elsewhere. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 21:50, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Orangemoody
I noticed that Orangemoody redirects here and there are no links for further information. Started an article draft Draft:Orangemoody Wikipedia editing ring to discuss the case as a regular Wikipedia article. — Brianhe (talk) 16:09, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Mooted by creation of Operation Orangemoody by another user on 9 September. Just noting here for closure. — Brianhe (talk) 04:54, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Is picture of Andrew Leonard appropriate
The top of this article contains a picture of Andrew Leonard. Neither the caption nor the article text explains how Leonard relates to conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia. Should that be spelled out in the caption and article, or should his picture be removed? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:16, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
 * That's a very good question. Mr. Leonard once wrote an article in Salon on the subject. But that's no reason he should be the poster boy for COI editing. Probably best to delete the picture.  John Nagle (talk) 19:31, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Removed - thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:39, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

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Biggleswiki statement unclear
Quoth the article (Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia):


 * One of the most noted accounts was registered under the name "Biggleswiki"[69] (an internal Wikipedia investigation resulted in several such cases).

Wikiblame suggests the parenthetical statement was added in the same edit as its surrounding content almost four years ago. I was wondering if anyone could clear it up, since I don't think MediaWiki supports "several such cases" of accounts "registered under the name 'Biggleswiki'" or any other non-unique name for that matter. Mattman00000 (talk) 05:59, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

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state law on covert ads
Regarding the page section Laws against covert advertising, for a potential addition of a subsection, since, because of the Constitution, Article I, section 8, the Commerce Clause, and a provision on the delegation of some power to the States, U.S. Federal law generally does not apply to intrastate commerce and therefore the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) usually has no jurisdiction over businesses operating only within a single state. There is, however, relevant case law regarding commercial use of a likeness in a magazine article that was really an advertisement disguised as an article, the likeness being that of a famous person portrayed as wearing a brand of clothing, that person winning the case against the magazine. I don't have the citation but I think it was in the case law annotations appearing a few years ago (and almost certainly still appearing) in McKinney's Consolidated Laws of New York (West Publishing or successor), likely available through the WestLaw electronic research service. I don't remember which statute was accompanied by this annotation. Nick Levinson (talk) 01:49, 18 February 2018 (UTC) (Editorial corrections: 01:58, 18 February 2018 (UTC))

Philip Cross - CIA link
Where is the entry for Philip Cross?

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/wikipedia-is-an-establishment-psyop-c352c0d2faf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.99.5.185 (talk) 11:45, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Discussion of HuffPost article on paid editing at the reliable sources noticeboard
There is a discussion of the reliability of Ashley Feinberg's HuffPost article "Facebook, Axios And NBC Paid This Guy To Whitewash Wikipedia Pages" on the reliable sources noticeboard. If you're interested, please participate at. —  Newslinger  talk   18:21, 2 April 2019 (UTC)